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THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

LOS  ANGELES 


From  the  Library  of 
CHARLES  DONALD  O'MALLEY 

1907  -  1970 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

His  I^ife  and  Teachings 


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MICHAEL  SERVETUS  ^^^f  ^^ 

His  Life  and  Teachings 


BY 

CARI.  THEOPHILUS  ODHNER 

PROFESSOR  OF  CHURCH  HISTORY,  ACADEMY   OF  THE  NEW 
CHURCH,    BRYN   ATHYN,  PA. 


"  One  iruth  from  an  enemy  is  worth  more  than 
a  hundred  lies  from  our  friends  " 

— Servetub 


PHILADELPHIA 

PRESS  OF  J.  B.  LIPPINCOTT  COMPANY 

1910 


COPYRIGHT.  1910.  BY  CARL  THEOPHILUS  ODHNER 


CONTENTS 

PART  I. 
SERVETUS  AND  CALVIN 

1.  Servetus  in  Modern  Literature 1 

2.  The  Failure  of  the  Reitobmation o 

3.  A   Genuine   Reformation    offered   through   Ser- 

vetus    9 

4.  The  Life  and   Work   of   Servetus 12 

5.  The  Trial  and  Death  of  Servetus 24 

6.  The   Aftermath 34 

PART  II. 
•   THE  THEOLOGY  OF  MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

L  Servetus  as  a  Natural  Philosopher 44 

2.  The  Spiritual  Sense  of  Scripture 46 

3.  The   Spiritual   World 53 

4.  Faith    and   Charity 58 

5.  Sin,  Freedom,  and  The  Sacraments 61 

6.  Christ   and   the   Trinity 65 

7.  The  Father.  The  Infinite  Esse 72 

8.  The  Logos,  The  Soul  of  Christ 75 

9.  The    Incarnation 79 

10.  The    Glorific.vtion 81 

11.  The  Holy  Spirit 85 

12.  The  Mission  of  Servetus 88 

V 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

His  Life  and  Teachings 

PART  I. 
SERVETUS  AND  CALVIN. 

1.  SERVETUS  IN  MODERN  LITERATURE. 

The  recent  celebrations  of  the  four  hundredth 
anniversary  of  Calvin's  birth  have  once  more  brought 
to  public  notice  his  treatment  of  Michael  Servetus, 
the  Spanish  physician  and  reformer.  Catholic  and 
Protestant  foes  of  Calvinism  have  gleefully  pointed 
to  the  auto-da-fe  in  Geneva  as  evidence  of  Calvin's 
fanaticism  and  cruelty;  it  has  been  a  pleasure,  evi- 
dently, to  rub  the  salt  of  this  case  into  the  one  ever 
open  sore  of  the  Calvinistic  brethren. 

The  latter,  while  regretfully  admitting  "the  one 
great  error"  of  their  otherwise  immaculate  leader, 
have  now,  as  ever  before,  endeavored  to  shield  his 
memory  behind  the  "barbarous  age  in  which  he 
lived,"  and  some  of  his  modern  apologists  have 
frankly  admitted  that  they  themselves  would  have 
done  as  Calvin  did,  had  they  lived  in  the  sixteenth 

1 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

century.  Moreover,  did  not  the  Calvinists  atone 
sufficiently  for  the  fault  of  their  theologian,  when 
in  the  year  1903  they  erected  at  Geneva  a  "  monu- 
ment expiatoire  "  to  Michael  Servetus,  recording  the 
fact  that  it  was  raised  by  "sons  of  Calvin,  full  of 
respect  and  recognition  of  our  great  reformer,  but 
condemning  one  error  which  was  the  error  of  his 
age "  ?  Unfortunately  for  the  apologists,  the  fact 
remains  that  this  "  one  error  "  of  Calvin's  was  quite 
unique  in  the  whole  Protestant  world  even  in  that 
"barbarous  age." 

For  Michael  Servetus  himself  the  Calvinists  of 
to-day  have  as  little  love  as  did  Calvin  himself.  The 
latter  burned  the  body  of  Servetus;  the  former  are 
still  burning  his  character  and  teachings  by  repeat- 
ing the  slanders  originally  invented  by  Calvin. 
Even  so  temperate  a  journal  as  the  Bibliotheca 
Sacra  is  not  ashamed  to  denounce  Servetus  as  "  a 
persistent  liar,  a  foul  re  viler,  and  at  the  best  a  vain 
dreamer."     (Oct.,  1909,  p.  679.) 

Much,  indeed,  has  been  written  about  Servetus,  yet 
little  is  known  concerning  his  real  teachings.* 
Socinians  and  Unitarians  have  claimed  him  as  a 
martyr  in  their  cause,  seizing  only  upon  his  argu- 
ments in  denial  of  a  Trinity  of  Persons  but  ignoring 
his  sublime  faith  in  the  sole  and  complete  Divinity 

*  None  of  his  works  have  ing  copies  of  the  originals, 
been  translated  into  Eng-  and  even  of  the  reprints, 
lish,    and    the    few   remain-       are   almost   inaccessible. 

2 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

of  Jesus  Christ.  Tlie  only  available  biography  of 
Servetus  in  the  English  language,  Servetus  and 
Calvin  (London,  1876),  is  by  a  Unitarian,  Dr. 
Eobert  Willis,  who  has  the  hardihood  to  assert  that 
Servetus  was  an  Arian  who  moreover  denied  the  life 
after  this!  The  work  is  worthless  from  a  theological 
point  of  view,  but  is  of  great  value  as  unbiased  his- 
tory. The  portrait  of  Servetus  in  the  present  treatise 
is  copied  from  the  frontispiece  in  the  work  of  Dr. 
Willis.  The  history  of  this  portrait  is  given  in 
Allwoerden's  Historia  Michaelis  Serveti  (1727), 
where  it  is  stated  that  it  was  originally  drawn  by  a 
friend  who  visited  Servetus  in  his  prison  in  Geneva 
(p.  147).  It  was  engraved  in  copper  at  Amsterdam 
1607.  (See  the  Life  of  Servetus  by  J.  G.  de 
Chauffpie,  London,  1771,  p.  61.) 

The  most  recent  contribution  to  the  literature  on 
Servetus  is  a  paper  by  Prof.  Ephraim  Emerton  in 
the  Harvard  Theological  Eeview  for  April,  1909. 
This  writer  admits  that  "  there  has  not  yet  appeared 
any  one  successful  effort  to  unravel  the  mystery  of 
Servetus'  life  and  thought."  "  His  manner  of 
expressing  himself  is  confusing  and  intricate  to  the 
last  degree,  so  much  so  that  neither  in  his  own  time, 
nor  since,  has  any  one  quite  dared  to  say  that  he 
understood  it."  Prof.  Emerton  certainly  has  not 
been  successful  in  grasping  even  the  central  idea  of 
the  Servetan  theologv^  since  he  commits  such  gross 
errors  as  to  maintain  that  Servetus  "  declared  that 

3 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Christ  was  not  consubstantial  and  co-eternal  with 
God,"  and  that  "  like  his  great  forerunner,  Arius,  he 
was  willing  to  accept  almost  any  description  of  the 
divine  perfections  of  the  redeeming  Christ, — only 
he  would  not  admit  the  thought  of  his  eternal  exist- 


ence 


'M 


In  Germany,  however,  more  serious  and  impartial 
efforts  have  been  made  to  investigate  the  theological 
system  of  Michael  Servetus.  We  refer  to  the  volume 
on  Michael  Servet  und  seine  Voeganger,  by  F. 
Trechsel  (Heidelberg,  1839,  pp.  328),  a  very  fair  and 
systematic  study  of  Servetus'  own  works;  and  more 
especially  the  three  volumes  on  Das  Lehrsystem 
Michael  Servet's,  by  the  late  Henri  Tollin  (Giiters- 
loh,  1876-1878).  The  latter,  a  pastor  of  the 
French  Protestant  Church  in  Magdeburg,  seems  to 
have  devoted  his  whole  life  to  the  study  and  defense 
of  Servetus,  writing  a  series  of  not  less  than  twenty- 
one  different  volumes,  pamphlets,  and  monographs, 
dealing  with  this  subject.  His  Lehrsystem  is  really 
a  most  remarkable  work,  written  with  a  warm- 
hearted sympathy  hardly  to  be  expected  from  a 
Lutheran  theologian.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  complete  com- 
pendium of  the  works  of  Servetus,  consisting  largely 
of  quotations  in  free  German  rendering,  with  the 
original  Latin  sentences  as  footnotes.  Tollin  himself 
is  so  unsparing  in  his  denunciation  of  the  funda- 
mental falsities  of  the  Old  Theology,  that  one  might 
almost  suspect  him  of  being  a  secret  Swedenborgian. 

4 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

There  is  no  direct  evidence,  however,  of  his  having 
read  the  Writings  of  Swedenborg. 

In  the  New  Church  the  interest  in  Michael  Ser- 
vetus  dates  from  the  time  when  the  late  Eev.  Louis 
H.  Tafel  published  an  account  of  "  Calvin  and  Ser- 
vetus "  in  the  last  issue  of  Words  for  the  New 
Church  (Philadelphia,  1886).  This  writer,  after 
an  independent  but  somewhat  cursory  study  of  the 
original  works  of  Servetus,  came  to  the  conclusion 
that  the  latter,  "  with  the  exception  of  some  minor 
and  unimportant  errors,  as,  e.g.,  his  belief  in  the 
revolt  of  angels  and  his  rejection  of  infant  baptism, 
represents  quite  fully  as  to  his  general  teaching  the 
Heavenly  Doctrines  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  viz. :  God 
in  Christ,  and  the  conjunction  of  Faith  and  Charity ; 
and  with  the  exceptions  mentioned  above,  the  doc- 
trines taught  by  Servetus  are  in  general  agreement 
with  those  enunciated  in  their  fulness,  and  with 
innumerable  particulars,  by  the  Lord  at  His  Second 
Coming." 

The  remarkable  extent  of  this  agreement  was  not, 
however,  realized  by  us  until  we  took  up  the  present 
study  of  the  theology  of  Michael  Servetus. 

2.  THE  FAILURE  OF  THE  REFORMATION. 

The  ends  of  Providence  in  sending  to  the  world  a 
man  such  as  Servetus  may  to  some  extent  be  per- 
ceived in  the  light  of  the  interior  historical  sense  of 
the  Word.     In  Daniel  9:  27  we  read  the  prophecy 
6 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

that  the  Messiah  "shall  confirm  the  covenant  with 
many  for  one  iveeTc;  hut  in  the  middle  of  the  week 
He  shall  cause  to  cease  the  sacrifice  and  the  oblation, 
until  at  last  desolation  shall  come  upon  the  bird  of 
abomination,  even  until  the  consummation,  and  the 
decision  shall  drop  upon  the  devastation." 

By  this  "  one  week/'  we  are  told  by  Swedenborg 
in  the  Apocalypse  Explained,  n.  684,  "  is  meant 
the  time  of  the  Eeformation,  when  again  there  would 
be  reading  of  the  Word  and  acknowledgment  of  the 
Divine  in  the  Human  of  the  Lord.  But  that  '  in  the 
middle  of  the  week  He  shall  cause  to  cease  the  sac- 
rifice and  the  oblation/  signifies  that  still,  interiorly 
with  the  Reformed,  there  would  not  be  truth  and 
good  in  their  worship,  and  this  for  the  reason  that 
they  had  assumed  faith  as  the  essential  of  the  Church, 
and  had  separated  it  from  charity."  He  states, 
further,  in  the  Brief  Exposition,  n.  21,  that  "the 
leading  Reformers  retained  all  the  dogmas  such  as 
they  were  and  had  been  with  the  Roman  Catholics, 
but  they  separated  charity  and  good  works  from  that 
faith  and  declared  them  to  be  not  conjointly  saving, 
in  order  that  they  might  tear  themselves  asunder 
from  the  Roman  Catholics." 

As  far  as  Theology  was  concerned,  the  Reformers 
cleansed  nothing  but  the  outside  of  the  cups  and  the 
platters  of  the  ruined  Christian  Church  in  which 
the  "  bird  of  abomination  "  had  made  its  nest.  Not 
one  of  the  fundamental  falsities  introduced  by  the 

6 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

Council  of  Nicaea  was  as  much  as  touched  by  the 
Eeformers.  The  dogmas  which  had  divided  the  One 
God  into  three  equally  Divine  persons,  and  which 
had  separated  the  Divine  and  the  Human  of  the 
One  God-Man  into  two  natures  forever  distinct  and 
unblendable,  these  reason-killing  mystifications  of 
the  Athanasian  Creed  remained  in  full  force  in  the 
Protestant  Church,  and  with  them  all  the  rest  of  the 
Greek  and  Eoman  fictions — such  as  the  doctrine  of 
original  sin,  the  vicarious  atonement,  the  imputa- 
tion of  the  merit  of  Christ,  etc.  Not  one  step  for- 
ward was  taken  by  the  Keformed  Theology,  from  the 
time  of  Luther  and  his  fellow  confessionalists  until 
the  day  when  finally  "  the  decision  dropped  upon 
the  devastation"  in  the  Last  Judgment  which  took 
place  in  the  spiritual  world  in  the  year  1757. 

In  the  ""  middle  of  the  week " — i.e.,  as  to  the 
interior  quality  of  its  state — ^the  Eeformation  proved 
itself  a  failure.  It  indeed  brought  forth  the  Word  of 
God  out  of  the  prison-house  into  whicli  it  had  been 
thrust  by  the  Church,  but  it  was  a  blind  Sampson, 
a  Bible  obscured  by  false  interpretations,  which  the 
Eeformers  now  set  to  work  to  grind  out  dogmas  in 
their  new  theological  mill.  Chief  of  these  dogmas 
was  the  doctrine  of  instantaneous  salvation  by  faith 
alone  without  the  need  of  charity  or  good  works. 
And  this  fountainhead  of  heresy  quickly  gave  birth 
to  the  doctrine  of  Predestination.  For,  so  Calvin 
reasoned  with  infernal  logic,  if  man  has  no  free  will 

7 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

in  spiritual  things,  if  he  cannot  even  procure  faith 
for  himself  but  receives  it  by  the  grace  of  God  alone, 
it  follows  inevitably  that  the  grace  of  God  is  extended 
only  to  those  few  favorites  or  elect  who  do  receive 
the  saving  faith,  Luther  and  Melanchthon  shud- 
dered at  this  Frankenstein  born  from  their  own  pet 
dogma.  Theological  controversies  immediately  fol- 
lowed on  this  and  other  subjects.  Charity,  being  of 
no  consequence  in  the  Protestant  scheme  of  salvation, 
was  thrown  to  the  winds.  The  Protestant  movement 
was  split  up  into  hostile  camps  which,  even  in  the 
face  of  overwhelming  common  danger,  could  never 
be  brought  together  for  a  single  common  purpose. 
Henceforth  the  Lutheran  Church,  and  the  Reformed 
Church,  and  the  Anglican  Church,  were  "  anathema 
maranatha "  one  to  the  other,  while  the  Beast  at 
Rome  gleefully  licked  his  bloody  chops. 

And  such  as  the  Clergy,  such  the  Laity !  For 
centuries  the  Protestant  nations  have  fought  each 
other  Just  as  if  they  had  no  common  spiritual  cause. 
Religion,  of  course,  has  nothing  to  do  with  Politics, — 
nor  with  private  life,  for  that  matter, — since  Religion 
consists  in  Faith  alone !  Has  this  their  Faith  made 
Protestants  more  sincerely  religious  than  the  great 
mass  of  Roman  Catholics?  More  self-sacrificing, 
more  temperate,  more  chaste,  more  truthful,  more 
pure  in  life  and  conduct  ?  "  By  their  fruits  ye  shall 
know  them." 


8 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

8.  A  GENUINE  REFORMATION  OFFERED 
THROUGH  SERVETUS. 

Yet  neither  the  Reformation,  nor  the  Christian 
Church  as  a  whole,  was  predestined  to  failure  by  the 
all-merciful  Providence  of  God,  but  both  were  in- 
tended to  restore  the  Garden  of  Cod  to  the  earth. 
The  Christian  Church  could  have  come  into  a  greater 
light  and  a  consequent  greater  charity,  if  Christians 
had  been  willing.  The  Lord  who  in  His  very  last 
words  on  earth  had  told  His  disciples :  "  Behold,  I 
am  with  you  all  days  until  the  Consummation  of  the 
Age " — this  same  Lord  was  ever  standing  at  the 
closed  door  of  His  Church,  knocking,  knocking,  but  not 
admitted.  The  Church  was  willing  enough  to  admit 
the  heathenism  of  Egypt  with  its  triads  of  gods, 
resulting  in  the  "  Christian "  doctrine  of  three 
Divine  persons;  the  heathenism  of  Carthage  with  its 
infant  sacrifices,  resulting  in  the  '*  Christian  "  doc- 
trine of  the  Vicarious  Atonement  by  the  bloody  sac- 
rifice of  the  innocent  Son  of  God;  the  heathenism 
of  Imperial  Eome  with  its  unquenchable  lust  of 
world-dominion,  resulting  in  the  "  Christian  "  claims 
and  practices  of  Papacy.  But  for  the  plain  and 
simple  teachings  of  the  Gentle  Shepherd,  by  whose 
Holy  Name  this  Church  dared  to  call  itself,  there  was 
no  room. 

Still  the  forsaken  Lord  did  not  forsake  His 
Church,  but  sent  prophet  after  prophet  to  His  faith- 
less  husbandmen,   bearing   messages   from   Him   of 

9 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

instruction,  protest,  warning,  and  reproof.  Through- 
out the  Dark  Ages  He  raised  up  an  almost  continu- 
ous chain  of  illumined  and  fearless  teachers, — known 
to  Church  History  as  "  Eeformers  before  the  Refor- 
mation,"— through  whom  the  Church  might  have 
been  led  to  become  a  Heaven  instead  of  a  hell  upon 
earth.  Among  the  first  of  these  special  messengers 
was  Origen,  the  greatest  and  most  spiritually-minded 
of  all  the  ancient  Fathers;  through  him  the  seven- 
sealed  Book  was  almost  opened.  And  the  last  and 
greatest  of  all  was  Michael  Servetus,  through 
whom  the  Lord  of  the  Church  extended  an  oppor- 
tunity for  the  Reformation  to  become  not  only  a 
Reform  but  an  actual  Restoration  of  the  Christian 
Church.  But  this  opportunity  was  rejected,  like  all 
the  preceding  offers  of  salvation.  Some  of  the 
prophets  had  been  stoned,  some  tortured,  drawn  and 
quartered,  and  others,  like  Savonarola  and  Servetus, 
were  sacrificed  as  burnt  offerings  on  the  altar  of 
Satan. 

More  than  any  of  the  other  reformers, — whether 
before,  during,  or  after  the  Reformation  itself, — 
Servetus  thoroughly  appreciated  the  spiritually  cor- 
rupt and  vastated  condition  of  the  Christian  Church. 
As  will  be  seen  by  extracts  from  his  own  works,  he 
realized  that  the  source  of  the  corruption  was  a 
false  idea  of  God,  introduced  as  early  as  the  Council 
of  Nicaea  when  "  the  Godhead  was  divided  into  three 
persons  with  one  nature,  and  Christ  divided  into  two 

10 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

natures  in  one  person."  This  mystical  doctrine  was 
left  untouched  by  the  German  reformers,  but  Ser- 
vetus  insisted  that  there  could  be  no  real  Reforma- 
tion until  the  primary  proposition  of  the  Christian 
Religion  had  been  reconsidered  and  brought  into  har- 
mony with  the  plain  teachings  of  Scripture  and  the 
imperative  demands  of  human  reason.  It  was  not 
enough,  he  urged,  to  lop  off  a  few  of  the  most 
unsightly  branches  of  ecclesiastical  polity  and  cus- 
tom; the  tree  itself  was  rotten  and  should  be  hewn 
down  in  order  to  make  room  for  a  new  tree  planted 
upon  the  Word  of  God  alone.  To  this  radical  work 
he  felt  himself  called  "  through  a  certain  Divine 
impulse."  ^  The  real  Reformation,  therefore,  was 
yet  to  come,  all  previous  attempts  being  at  the  best 
only  a  preparation  for  the  future  great  work.  And 
he  himself,  he  confessed,  was  only  a  forerunner,  one 
of  the  earliest  champions  in  the  coming  great  battle 
of  Armageddon  for  the  establishment  of  a  new  and 
genuine  Church.  Regarding  Christianity  as  pri- 
marily a  system  of  Doctrine, — since  men  could  not 
possibly  do  what  is  right  unless  they  were  taught 
what  is  right, — Servetus  of  course  was  immediately 
condemned  as  a  mere  "  doctrinaire,"  a  conceited  and 
unpractical  person  of  "  rampant  self-assertion," 
"  incapable,  from  the  tendency  of  his  mind,  of 
admitting  the  importance  of  the  element  of  practical 
ethics  in  the  scheme  of  Christianity,"  etc.    (McClin- 

'  R=Christianismi  Restitutio  p.  4. 
11 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

tock  &  Strong's  Theological  Cyclopedia,  vol.  ix, 
p.  590). 

How  far  from  the  truth  is  this  estimate  of  Ser- 
vetus  will  be  seen  in  our  account  of  his  doctrine  of 
faith  and  charity.  We  think  his  appreciation  of 
"  practical  ethics "  will  compare  favorably  with 
Luther's  advice  to  Melanchthon: 

"  Remain  thou  a  sinner,  and  sin  bravely  but  confide 
and  rejoice  still  more  bravely  in  Christ.  As  long  as  we 
are  here  we  must  sin.  This  life  is  not  the  habitation  of 
righteousness.  It  is  enough  that  we,  by  the  treasure 
of  grace,  acknowledge  the  Lamb  of  God,  which  taketh 
away  the  sins  of  the  world.  From  this  the  sin  shall  not 
tear  us  loose,  even  if  we  a  thousand  and  a  thousand  times 
a  day,  commit  fornication  and  murder."  (Luther's 
Epistles.     Vol.  I.     Jena,  1556,  p.  345.) 


4.  THE  LIFE  AND  WORK  OF  SERVETUS. 

Tlie  chief  purpose  of  the  present  treatise  is  to 
bring  out  a  systematic  view  of  the  theological  doc- 
trines of  Servetus,  and  we  must  therefore  confine  our 
account  of  his  life  to  a  few  general  outlines.  Michael 
Servetus  was  a  Spaniard,  born  of  a  good  family  at 
Villanueva,  Aragon,  in  the  year  1509  (or  1511).  Of 
his  childhood  nothing  is  known,  but  he  is  said  to  have 
entered  the  university  of  Saragossa  at  the  age  of 
fourteen  years.  Being  an  intellectual  prodigy  he 
rapidly  acquired  such  a  knowledge  of  Latin,  Greek, 
Hebrew  and  Arabic  that  on  account  of  his  linguistic 
proficiency  he  was  at  the  age  of  seventeen  appointed 
secretary  to  Quintana,  the  father-confessor  of  Em- 

12 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

peror  Charles  V.  In  this  capacity  he  was  present 
at  the  imperial  coronation  at  Bologna,  in  1529,  where 
he  became  acquainted  with  the  papal  court  in  all  its 
splendor  and  corruption.  Soon  afterwards  he  accom- 
panied Quintana  to  the  great  Diet  at  Augsburg  where 
the  Reformers  presented  their  famous  "  Confession," 
and  he  thus  enjoyed  the  opportunity  of  studying  at 
close  range  the  representative  men  and  principles  of 
the  great  ecclesiastical  controversy  then  raging. 
Evidently  Servetus  was  disgusted  with  both  parties, 
or  was  becoming  known  as  a  theological  malcontent, 
for  we  learn  that  he  left  the  service  of  Quintana  in 
the  year  1530  and  betook  himself  to  the  university 
of  Toulouse.  Here  he  entered  deeply  into  the  study 
of  Jurisprudence  and  Theology,  and  here  for  the 
first  time  he  found  the  Word  of  God  in  the  original. 
This  proved  the  turning  point  of  his  life.  He  says 
he  "read  a  thousand  times  this  book  from  Heaven 
which  treats  of  Christ  alone,"  and  in  his  reading  the 
youthful  student  was  gifted  with  a  most  marvellous 
light,  enabling  him  to  discern  at  a  glance  the  gen- 
uine principles  of  universal  Christian  Theology. 
Throwing  overboard  the  whole  mass  of  oecumenical 
dogmatism,  medieval  scholasticism  and  modern  con- 
fessionalism,  Servetus  refused  to  be  taught  anything 
but  the  doctrines  of  the  Bible  itself,  so  profound  yet 
after  all  so  simple  when  once  Jesus  Christ  is  recog- 
nized as  the  universal  subject  of  the  whole  of  Scrip- 
ture.    An  entirely  new  conception  of  Theology  was 

13 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

bom  in  his  mind,  a  system  which  in  all  its  essential 
features  remained  unchanged  with  him  to  the  end  of 
his  days;  this  system  he  now  committed  to  paper 
and  published  under  his  own  name  at  Hagenau,  near 
Basel,  in  the  year  1531,  under  the  title  De  Trini- 
TATis  Erroribus  (ou  the  errors  in  respect  to  the 
Trinity).* 

The  appearance  of  this  little  volume  was  received 
at  first  with  some  degree  of  tolerance  by  the  reform- 
ers. Oecolampadius  (with  whom  Servetus  had  come 
in  personal  contact  at  Basel),  while  fundamentally 
disagreeing  with  the  author,  stated  that  the  book 
"  contains  much  that  is  good,"  and  Melanchthon 
wrote  that  he  "  read  Servetus  a  good  deal,"  and  fore- 
saw great  future  controversies  on  the  subjects  in- 
volved.    Further  study  of  the  book  soon  convinced 

*  De   Teinitatis    Errori-  Church  at  Bryn  Athyn,  Pa. 

BUS     LiBRi     Septem.       Per  It  contains,  as  an  appendix, 

Michaelem    Servetum    alias  the  Dialogorum  de  Trini- 

Reves    ab    Arragonia    His-  tate    Libri    Duo,    by    Ser- 

panum.       Anno     MDXXXI.  vetus,     and     his     Institia 

(small    8vo,    pp.    120,    the  Regni    Christi,     Capitula 

leaves  instead  of  the  pages  Quatuor,     (pp.    94).      The 

being    numbered).      Copies  volume   is  boimd  in  a  leaf 

of  the  original   edition  are  of  parchment  taken  from  an 

exceedingly  rare.    A  facsim-  illuminated    Missal    of    the 

ile    edition,    countcrfteiting  Middle  Ages  containing  the 

the  original,  was  published  words    and    musical    notes 

in  Holland  about  the  year  of       a       chant       reading: 

1620.      It   differs    from    the  "  Sanctus,     Sanctus,     Sanc- 

original    by    a    single    mis-  tus.      Gloria  Patri  et  Filio 

print  (p.  83  b).     A  copy  of  et  Spiritu  Sancto."     It  was 

this  edition,  which  is  almost  purchased  at  Amsterdam  by 

as  rare  a,s  the  original,   is  the  Rev.  W.  H.   Benade  in 

preserved   in   the   library  of  the  year    1878. 
the    Academy    of    the    New 

14 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

the  theologians  of  its  radical  and  dangerous  char- 
acter,— dangerous  alike  to  Protestants  and  Catholics. 
The  Eoman  Church  was  here  identified  with  the 
"  woman  in  scarlet,"  and  with  the  Babylon  that  was 
about  to  be  destroyed.  ("  0  hestia  hestiarum,  mere- 
trix  scclcratissima !  "  The  mendicant  monk  he  com- 
pared to  a  devouring  locust.  "  The  locust  has  by 
nature  a  sort  of  monk's  cowl;  add  to  this  a  wallet, 
and  you  have  a  begging  friar  complete,  in  other 
words,  a  hooded  devil.")  This  was  sufficient  for 
the  monk  Quintana,  the  quondam  patron  of  Servetus, 
to  secure  the  promulgation  of  an  imperial  edict  for- 
bidding the  work  and  ordering  its  destruction  every- 
where. The  reformers,  on  the  other  hand,  were 
infuriated  at  its  unsparing  and  unanswerable  argu- 
ments against  the  doctrines  upon  which  they  had 
based  their  sole  hope  of  salvation:  the  Vicarious 
Atonement,  and  Faith  Alone.  With  one  voice  they 
cried  out  against  it,  and  Martin  Bucer,  the  "  gentle  " 
reformer  of  Strassburg,  "  the  peace-maker  of  the 
Reformation,"  publicly  declared  that  such  a  man  as 
Servetus  "  ought  to  be  disemboweled  and  torn  to 
pieces"  (avulsis  visceribus  discerperetur) . 

Small  wonder  that  the  Christian  world  arose  as 
one  man  to  crush  this  stripling  theologian  of  twenty- 
one,  who,  armed  with  Scripture  alone,  had  dared  to 
attack  in  its  very  stronghold  the  "  faith  once  deliv- 
ered "  by  the  fathers,  the  faith  established  by  major- 
ity votes  and  anathemas  at  the  great  and  holy  CEcu- 

15 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

menical  Councils,  where  inspired  bishops  fought  each 
other  literally  tooth  and  nail,  until  the  great  "  mys- 
tery "  of  the  tripersonal  Godhead  had  been  tri- 
umphantly established  upon  the  ruins  of  a  dead 
Church. 

"  Infinitely  great,"  declares  Servetus  in  his  first 
book,  "has  been  the  injury  brought  upon  the  Chris- 
tian Church  by  this  dogma  of  Tritheism.  Innumer- 
able heresies  and  monstrous  notions  have  sprung 
from  it,  and  within  the  Church  it  has  given  birth  to 
the  most  marvellous  doctrines  and  thousands  of  inex- 
plicable, hairsplitting  and  unreasonable  problems."  ^ 
"  These  insanities  and  phantasies  have  not  only  been 
the  objects  of  ridicule  for  Jews  and  Mohammedans, 
but  they  have  also  constituted  the  chief  obstacles  to 
the  conversion  of  these  people  to  the  Christian  faith. 
It  would  be  wise  to  listen  to  Mohammed's  own  decla- 
ration, for  one  truth  from  an  enemy  is  worth  more 
than  a  hundred  lies  from  our  friends." '  "  Mo- 
hammed expressly  declares  that  Christ  was  the  great- 
est of  all  prophets,  a  spirit,  a  force,  nay,  the  soul  of 
God  Himself,  the  Word  born  by  a  virgin  through 
the  Divine  Breath;  and  he  declares  that  the  Jews 
had  deserved  the  misery  which  had  come  upon  them 
on  account  of  their  unfaith  and  the  wickedness  they 
had  done  to  Christ."  *  "  For  all  this  philosophic 
noise  and  corruption  we  have  to  thank  the  Greeks  at 

='E=De  Trin.  Erroribus,  'E.  42  6. 

38    a    (=first   page   of   the  *E.  43  o. 

38th  leaf). 

16 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

the  Great  Councils;  but  of  what  authority  is  the 
witness  of  a  Church  that  has  fallen  from  the  true 
foundation  of  faith?  A  Church  wherein  the  mem- 
bers no  longer  know  Christ,  but  are  filled  with  the 
spirit  of  rapine  and  inchastity  instead  of  the  Holy 
Spirit?"^ 

Having  rejected  the  doctrine  of  three  Divine  per- 
sons, Servetus  next  strikes  at  the  other  great  pillar 
in  the  house  of  the  Philistines :  the  Protestant  doc- 
trine of  Justification. 

"  It  is  not  faith  in  the  merit  of  Christ,"  he  says, 
"  that  justifies  a  man,  for  neither  the  merit  nor  the 
fault  of  one  person  can  be  transferred  to  another 
person,  but  it  is  the  faith  in  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
as  the  Son  of  God.  Having  departed  from  this  one 
foundation  of  faith,  the  Lutherans  do  not  under- 
stand what  justification  is.  But  even  this  faith  in 
Christ  does  not  justify  without  the  positive  element 
of  love  or  charity.  The  faith  alone  of  the  Lutherans 
is  empty,  vain,  and  monstrous,  good  for  nothing  but 
to  make  men  spiritually  lazy  and  torpid.  It  is  im- 
possible to  understand  why  Lutherans  should  urge 
men  to  charity,  when  nevertheless  they  do  not  ascribe 
any  uses  to  charity,  since  they  declare  that  all  good 
works  contribute  nothing  to  salvation."  ^ 

It  is  not  to  be  thought,  however,  that  Servetus 

merely  contented  liimself  with  the  negation  of  the 

two  fundamental  falsities  of  the  Old  Theology;  on 

»E.  43  6.  'E.  99  o. 

2  17 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

the  contrar}^,  his  whole  effort  was  to  reconstruct  a 
positive  Christian  Theology  on  the  basis  of  Sacred 
Scripture,  and  on  it  alone.  We  will  not  attempt, 
now,  to  outline  his  actual  system,  but  will  consider 
it  as  a  whole  in  connection  with  his  last  and  greatest 
work,  the  Eestitution  of  Christianity.  Suffice 
it  to  state  here  simply  that  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ 
was  to  him  not  only  the  centre  but  the  whole  of  all 
Scripture,  of  all  Theology,  and  of  all  Religion. 
Christ  is  the  eternal  Word  made  Flesh.  The  Word 
of  God  is  God  Himself.  Therefore  Clirist  is  God 
Himself,  the  only  God,  the  one  and  only  Person  of 
the  Godhead,  for  in  Him  dwelleth  the  fulness  of  the 
Godhead  bodily.  This  is  the  theology  of  Servetus 
in  a  nutshell. 

Oecolampadius  and  the  other  theological  authori- 
ties in  Basel,  where  Servetus  resided  at  this  time, 
now  threatened  him  with  expulsion  from  the  city 
and  promptly  confiscated  all  copies  of  his  book 
within  their  reach.  Servetus  promised  to  write  a 
retraction  of  his  "  errors,"  and  in  1532  published  a 
new  little  work,  entitled  Two  Dialogues  concern- 
ing THE  Trinity.  In  the  preface  he  declares  that 
he  takes  back  everything  he  had  formerly  written 
on  the  subject  of  the  Trinity,  but,  he  adds,  "  not  as 
being  false,  but  as  imperfect  and  as  it  were  written 
by  a  boy  to  boys."  He  then  proceeds  to  "  retract " 
his  former  teachings  by  asserting  them  more  vigor- 
ously than  ever,  declaring  that  he  had  been  encour- 

18 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACmNGS 

aged  to  do  so  by  the  fact  that  his  adversaries  had 
not  been  able  to  bring  against  him  one  single  passage 
of  Scripture.  The  personal  union  of  the  Father 
and  the  Son,  of  the  Divine  and  the  Human  in  the 
one  substance  of  Jesus  Christ,  is  exhibited  in  even 
clearer  light  than  before.  He  further  emphasizes  the 
freedom  of  the  human  will  and  the  absolute  necessity 
of  charity  and  good  works  for  the  sake  of  salvation, 
and  he  closes  with  a  fervid  prayer  for  the  speedy 
coming  of  the  time  when  there  would  be  freedom  of 
conscience  and  freedom  of  speech.  '^  May  the  Lord 
destroy  all  the  tyrants  of  the  Church.     Amen." 

Eealizing  that  he  no  longer  could  hope  to  influ- 
ence the  German  reformers,  Servetus  now  withdrew 
to  Paris  where,  under  the  assumed  name  of  Ville- 
neuve  (the  name  of  his  native  town  in  Spain),  he 
took  up  the  study  of  Philosophy,  Mathematics,  and 
Medicine  at  the  Sorbonne.  Two  years  later  he 
accepted  a  position  as  proofreader  and  editor  with 
a  publishing  house  at  Lyons,  returning  to  Paris  in 
1537  in  order  to  resume  his  medical  studies.  The 
authorities  were  quick  to  recognize  his  unusual 
talents,  graduated  him  in  1538  and  invited  him  to 
deliver  a  course  of  lectures  on  Geography,  Mathe- 
matics and  Astronomy.  His  lectures  were  highly 
popular  and  were  attended  by  many  high  dignitaries, 
but  his  love  of  truth,  lack  of  caution,  and,  possibly, 
a  native  love  of  fighting,  soon  brought  him  into 
trouble.    Having  accused  the  medical  profession  as  a 

19 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

whole  of  being  "  the  plague  of  the  world  "  because 
of  their  gross  ignorance  of  Xature  and  natural  law, 
the  whole  university  was  stirred  into  commotion. 
The  medical  faculty  accused  him  of  having  mixed 
Astrology  into  his  lectures  on  Astronomy;  the  theo- 
logical faculty  supported  him,  however,  and  Servetus 
managed  to  escape  further  persecution,  after  having 
received  a  severe  "  warning." 

After  his  graduation  as  Doctor  of  Medicine,  Serve- 
tus found  a  patron  in  the  Archbishop  of  Vienne,  in 
Dauphine,  and  under  the  protection  of  this  powerful 
friend  he  remained  in  Vienne  as  a  practising  physi- 
cian for  twelve  or  thirteen  years,  acquiring  a  lucra- 
tive practice  and  many  friends.  Theology,  however, 
still  remained  his  dearest  love,  and  in  the  year  1543 
he  brought  out  a  new  and  annotated  edition  of 
Pagnini's  Latin  version  of  the  Bible.  In  the  preface 
he  teaches  that  there  is  a  twofold  meaning  in  the 
Word  of  God, — one  a  literal-historical  sense,  and  the 
other  an  internal  spiritual  sense  which  everywhere 
refers  to  Christ  and  His  Kingdom.  In  his  marginal 
notes,  especially  to  the  Psalms  and  the  Prophets,  he 
suggests  interpretations  of  the  Messianic  passages 
in  the  light  of  the  history  of  Biblical  times,  and  then 
carries  them  over  to  Christ  in  the  higher  or  spiritual 
sense.  On  this  account  alone  the  edition  was  placed 
on  the  "  Index  Prohibitorum  "  by  the  Catholic  theo- 
logians. Personally,  he  remained  unmolested  and 
in  freedom  to  turn  liip  attention  once  more  to  the 

20 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

ideal  of  his  youth,  the  radical,  spiritual  Reformation 
of  the  Christian  Church.  From  the  German  reform- 
ers he  could  not  hope  for  cooperation  in  this  work, 
but  Calvin's  more  logical  form  of  mind  seemed  to 
hold  out  a  more  attractive  prospect.  If  Calvin  could 
be  persuaded  to  reconsider  his  premises,  there  might 
be  some  hope.  To  Calvin,  therefore,  he  turned,  open- 
ing a  correspondence  that  proved  fatal,  in  the  end, 
to  the  trustful  Servetus.  Disdaining  flattery  and 
forgetting  "the  deference  due"  to  the  uncrowned 
pope  of  Geneva,  Servetus  wrote  to  Calvin  as  to  an 
equal,  and,  as  the  correspondence  and  opposition 
developed,  he  was  almost  as  unsparing  as  Calvin  in 
the  exchange  of  uncomplimentary  epithets.  Tired  of 
a  correspondence,  which  had  developed  into  a  con- 
troversy with  an  obscure  individual,  Calvin  finally 
sent  to  Servetus  a  copy  of  his  great  "  authoritative  " 
Institutiones  Religionis  Christians,  as  if  Serve- 
tus had  never  seen  this  ne  plus  ultra  monument  of 
logical  conclusions  drawn  from  insane  and  cruel 
premises.  Servetus,  however,  far  from  being  over- 
whelmed by  the  condescension,  returned  the  work  to 
Calvin  profusely  annotated  with  marginal  notes  show- 
ing from  Scripture  and  from  the  ante-Nicene 
Fathers  the  untenable  character  of  Calvin's  main 
propositions.  This  was  an  unpardonable  offense. 
"  There  is  hardly  a  page  that  is  not  defiled  with  his 
vomit,"  Calvin  wrote  to  a  friend  in  regard  to  the 
annotations.     And  when,  in  addition,  Servetus  sent 

21 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

to  him  a  copy  of  the  first  outlines  of  the  projected 
Christianismi  Restitutio,  Calvin  wrote  thus  to  his 
chief  lieutenant,  Farel :  "  Servetus  lately  wrote  to 
me  and  sent  me  with  his  letters  a  great  volume  of  his 
ravings,  saying  that  I  would  see  there  things  stu- 
pendous and  unheard  of  until  now.  He  offers  to 
come  here  if  I  approve,  but  I  will  not  pledge  my 
faith  to  him.  For  should  he  come,  if  my  authority 
avails,  I  should  never  suffer  him  to  go  away  alive." 

As  he  did  not  yet  have  Servetus  within  the  reach 
of  his  own  hand,  Calvin  wrote  to  Cardinal  Tournon 
denouncing  the  Spanish  physician  for  heresy,  but 
Servetus  was  again  protected  by  the  Archbishop  of 
Vienne.  The  Spaniard,  unconscious  of  the  plot, 
serenely  kept  on  with  his  daring  theological  studies, 
and  in  1552  completed  his  second  and  last  great 
work,  the  Christianismi  Restitutio.  This  was  a 
stout  volume  of  734  pages,  and  was  secretly  printed 
in  Vienne,  without  the  author's  name,  but  the  initials 
"M.  S.  V."  (Michael  Servetus  Yillanovus),  at  the 
end  of  the  book,  furnished  a  sufficient  clue  as  to  the 
authorship.  The  work  consists  of  a  series  of  separate 
treatises,  paged  continuously.  First  there  are  five 
books  and  two  dialogues  on  the  Divine  Trinity,  then 
two  books  on  Faith  and  the  Justice  of  Christ's  King- 
dom; these  are  followed  by  four  books  on  Regenera- 
tion and  the  Kingdom  of  Antichrist,  thirty  Epistles 
to  Calvin,  sixty  Signs  of  Antichrist,  and  finally  an 
"  Apologia  "  addressed  to  Philip  Melanchtlion.     Of 

22 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

the  original  edition  of  one  thousand  copies,  only  two 
copies  are  known  to  have  escaped  confiscation  and 
destmction ;  one  of  these  is  preserved  in  the  National 
Library  at  Paris,  and  the  other  in  the  Imperial 
Library  at  Vienna,  where  a  reprint  was  published  in 
1790.    Of  this  reprint  there  is  a  copy  at  Harvard. 

Immediately  upon  publication  a  copy  of  this  work 
was  sent  to  Calvin,  who  at  once  recognized  the  hand 
of  Servetus,  and  forthwith,  through  a  go-between, 
denounced  the  author  to  the  Catholic  authorities  in 
Vienne.  On  the  pretext  that  his  medical  services 
were  required  by  some  sick  prisoners,  Servetus  was 
induced  to  proceed  to  the  prison  hospital,  where  he 
was  arrested  and  examined.  On  this  occasion  Dr. 
Villeneuve  denied  that  he  was  identical  with  Michael 
Servetus,  the  author  of  the  book  De  Trinitatis 
Erroeibds,  and  tliis  is  the  sole  foundation  for  the 
charge  that  he  was  "  a  persistent  liar."  But  what  if 
he  did  play  with  the  facts  of  his  biography  in  front 
of  treacherous,  unjust  and  cruel  inquisitors?  Did 
they  tell  the  truth  in  their  charges  against  him,  or 
could  he  expect  any  justice  from  them?  Is  a  man 
"  a  persistent  liar  "  if  he  tries  to  deceive  a  band  of 
robbers  and  murderers?  Calvin  and  his  saintly  fol- 
lowers would  not,  of  course,  under  any  circumstances 
have  tried  to  save  their  lives,  or  even  their  country,  by 
a  misstatement  of  facts,  but  they  did  not  mind  de- 
ceiving the  human  race  by  the  false  doctrines  of 
Predestination  and  Infant  Damnation.  Conscience, 
truly,  is  a  variable  quantity ! 

23 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Having  frankly  acknowledged  himself  as  the 
author  of  the  letters  to  Calvin,  which  the  latter 
kindly  submitted  to  the  Roman  Catholic  Inquisition, 
Servetus  was  imprisoned  and  condemned  to  death 
by  slow  fire,  but  by  the  assistance  of  friends  man- 
aged to  escape  from  Vienne  on  April  7th,  1553. 

5.  THE  TRIAL  AND  DEATH  OF  SERVETUS. 

Intending  to  take  refuge  in  Italy,  Servetus  made 
his  way  to  Geneva  in  July  of  his  fatal  year.  Imagin- 
ing himself  safe  in  this  free  Eepublic  where  so  many 
French  Protestants  had  found  refuge,  he  remained 
here  for  a  month  at  an  inn,  and  even  appeared  at 
public  worship.  His  presence  in  the  city  thus  became 
known  to  Calvin,  who,  being  the  political  as  well  as 
ecclesiastical  dictator,  caused  him  to  be  arrested  on 
August  13th.  The  arrest  and  the  subsequent  trial 
and  execution  were,  of  course,  totally  illegal,  as  Ser- 
vetus was  not,  any  more  than  Calvin,  a  subject  of 
the  Commonwealth,  nor  had  committed  any  of  his 
alleged  offenses  within  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Genevan 
authorities.  Nobody,  in  fact,  except  Calvin  had 
ever  read  or  even  seen  any  of  the  books  for  which 
Servetus  was  condemned  to  death,  or  understood  the 
first  thing  of  the  theological  controversy  involved. 
The  Court  that  was  sitting  in  judgment  was  com- 
posed of  nothing  but  laymen,  some  of  them  the  polit- 
ical enemies  of  the  bilious  tyrant,  but  tlie  majority 

24 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

were  the  subservient  tools  (sincere  or  terrorized)  of 
the  eloquent,  imperious  and  saintly  Keformer.  To 
the  ruling  majority  the  testimony  of  Calvin  alone 
was  enough,  and  to  Calvin  the  case  of  Servetus  was 
a  test  as  to  the  permanence  of  his  rule  over  the 
disaffected  political  party  in  Geneva. 

We  will  not  dwell  at  length  upon  the  details  of 
the  ensuing  trial  and  execution,  the  story  of  which 
reads  as  if  enacted  in  Hell  rather  than  on  the  earth 
among  Christians  and  reformers.  Immediately  upon 
his  arrest  Servetus  was  robbed  of  his  money  and  per- 
sonal property,  (ninety-seven  gold  crowns,  a  gold 
chain,  a  number  of  rings  and  precious  stones,  cloth- 
ing, etc.),  and  was  thrust  into  the  foulest  dungeon 
of  the  common  jail,  a  cell  set  aside  for  criminals  of 
the  lowest  class,  where  for  some  time  he  was  left  to 
rot  without  being  informed  of  the  charges  against 
him. 

One  might  think  that  any  ordinary  Eeformed 
Christian  savage  even  in  that  "  barbarous  age " 
would  have  been  moved  to  pity  by  the  following 
appeal,  written  Sept.  15th,  1553: 

"  My  most  honored  Lords  ! — I  humbly  entreat 
of  you  to  put  an  end  to  these  great  delays,  or  to 
exonerate  me  of  the  criminal  charge.  You  must 
see  that  Calvin  is  at  his  wits'  end  and  knows 
not  what  more  to  say,  but  for  his  pleasure  would 
have  me  rot  here  in  prison.  The  lice  eat  me  up 
25 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

alive;  my  breeches  are  in  rags^,  and  I  have  no 
change — no  doublet,  and  but  a  single  shirt  in 
tatters.  I  have  also  demanded  to  have  counsel 
assigned  me.  This  would  have  been  granted  me 
in  my  native  country;  and  here  I  am  a  stranger 
and  ignorant  of  the  laws  and  customs  of  the 
land.  Yet  you  have  given  counsel  to  my  accuser, 
whilst  refusing  it  to  me." 

Some  clothing  was  indeed  sent  to  the  unfortunate 
prisoner,  weeks  afterwards,  but  the  appeal  for  legal 
assistance  was  rejected  "  as  a  piece  of  extraordinary 
impudence."     (Willis,  p.  370.) 

The  appeal  is  renewed  in  a  letter  of  Oct.  10th, 
1553: 

"  Most  noble  Lords, — It  is  now  about  three 
weeks  since  I  petitioned  for  an  audience,  and 
still  I  have  no  reply.  I  entreat  you  for  the  love 
of  Jesus  Christ  not  to  refuse  me  that  which 
you  would  grant  to  a  Turk,  when  I  ask  for  jus- 
tice at  your  hands.  I  have,  indeed,  things  of 
importance  to  communicate  to  you,  very  neces- 
sary to  be  known. 

"  As  to  what  you  may  have  commanded  to  be 
done  for  me  in  the  way  of  cleanliness,  I  have  to 
inform  you  that  nothing  has  been  done,  and 
that  I  am  in  a  more  filthy  plight  than  ever.  In 
addition,  I  suffer  terribly  from  the  cold  and 
26 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

from  colic,  and  from  my  rupture  which  causes 
me  miseries  of  other  kinds  that  I  should  feel 
shame  in  writing  about  more  particularly.  It 
is  very  cruel  that  I  am  neither  allowed  to  speak, 
nor  to  have  my  most  pressing  wants  supplied! 
for  the  love  of  God,  Sirs,  in  pity  or  in  duty,  give 
orders  in  my  behalf."     (Willis,  p.  455.) 

When  at  length  his  accuser  (through  the  person 
of  Calvin's  cook ! )  brought  forward  his  charges,  we 
find  among  these  accusations  such  as  the  following: 
that  he  had  remained  unmarried,  probably  because 
he  preferred  an  immoral  life; — that  he  had  read 
the  Koran,  and  therefore  was  a  secret  Mohammedan ; 
— ^that  he  had  troubled  the  Churches  in  Germany  by 
his  first  book  [of  which  almost  all  the  copies  had 
been  confiscated],  and  thus  done  eternal  injury  to  a 
vast  number  of  souls; — that  [like  Calvin]  he  had 
escaped  from  the  Eoman  Catholic  Inquisition; — that 
he  had  blasphemed  against  the  Trinity  in  deny- 
ing the  plurality  of  divine  persons,  each  of  whom  was 
a  God; — that  he  had  written  in  scurrilous  and  blas- 
phemous terms  against  Monsieur  Jean  Calvin; — 
that  he  had  taught  that  the  soul  of  man  is  mortal; 
and  that  Jesus  Christ  had  taken  only  the  fourth 
part  of  His  body  from  the  Virgin  Mary;  etc.,  etc. 

Many  of  these  charges  Servetus  did  not  deem 
worthy  of  an  answer,  but  the  last  two  he  designated 
as   "  horrible,  execrable.     Had   I   said  anything  of 

27 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

the  kind,  I  should  myself  think  me  worthy  of  death." 
(Willis,  p.  451.) 

During  the  personal  hearings  of  the  long  and 
tedious  trial,  Servetus  was  threatened  with  torture 
on  the  rack,  and  escaped  only  at  the  earnest  remon- 
strance of  Vandel,  one  of  the  Genevan  senators. 
Urged  by  the  Catholic  authorities  of  Vienne  to  return 
the  prisoner  to  the  death  by  slow  fire  from  which 
he  had  escaped,  the  Court  mercifully  gave  him  the 
choice  of  being  returned  or  remaining  in  their  own 
Eeformed  hands.  Servetus,  relying,  perhaps,  on  the 
influence  of  Calvin's  political  enemies,  preferred  the 
latter.  Calvin  himself  frequently  appeared  in  per- 
son against  his  victim  whose  calm,  rational,  and 
unfearing  arguments  he  overwhelmed  with  personal 
compliments  such  as  "  scoundrel,"  "  rascal,"  "  vil- 
lainous cur,"  "  dog,"  "  ass,"  "  swine,"  etc.  In  written 
notes  Servetus,  indeed,  returned  the  compliments  by 
epithets  such  as  "  reprobate,"  "  blasphemer,"  and 
"  murderer,"  but  at  the  hearings  he  generally  pre- 
served a  calm  attitude,  and  a  manifest  endeavor  to 
shift  the  quarrel  from  the  personal  to  the  theological 
plane.  What  especially  infuriated  Calvin  was  the 
persistent  demand  of  Servetus  for  Scriptural  proofs 
against  him,  proofs  that  were  never  forthcoming. 

Alluding  to  the  many  clerical  signatures  obtained 
by  Calvin  to  his  professed  "  Refutation,"  Servetus 
writes  thus  to  the  Court: 


28 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

"  Thus  far  we  have  had  clamor  enough,  and  a  great 
crowd  of  subscribers!  But  what  places  in  Scripture  do 
they  adduce  as  their  authority  for  the  Invisible  Individual 
Son  they  acknowledge?  They  refer  to  none;  nor,  indeed, 
will  they  ever  be  able  to  point  to  any.  Is  this  becoming 
in  these  great  ministers  of  the  Divine  Word,  who  every- 
where boast  that  they  teach  nothing  that  is  not  confirmed 
by  distinct  passages  of  Sacred  Scripture?  But  no  such 
places  are  now  forthcoming;  and  my  doctrine,  consequently 
is  impugned  by  mere  clamor,  without  a  shadow  of  reason, 
and  without  the  citation  of  a  single  authority  against  it. 

Michael   Sebvetus. 

Here,  indeed,  alone,  but  having  Christ  as  his  most 
sure  Protector."      (Willis,  p.  441.) 

The  result  of  the  trial  was  a  foregone  conclusion. 
Writing  to  his  friend,  Sulzer,  Calvin  quotes  with 
approval  the  pious  desire  of  Bucer  to  have  Servetus 
"  disemboweled  and  torn  to  pieces  " ;  and  writing  to 
Farel,  his  chief  lieutenant,  he  says,  "  I  hope  the  sen- 
tence will  be  capital  at  the  least,  but  I  would  have 
the  cruel  manner  of  carrying  it  out,  remitted" 
(Willis,  p.  437), —  as  if  he  did  not  know  that  the 
law  of  Geneva  demanded  the  burning  of  a  heretic 
once  convicted;  and  as  if  he  did  not  know  that  his 
despotic  will  could  override  any  law  of  the  town ! 

In  the  face  of  deadly  threats  and  browbeatings, 
Servetus  would  not  make  a  single  retraction  or  com- 
promise, his  one  demand  being  to  be  confronted  with 
the  Word  of  the  Only  One,  whom  he  recognized  as  his 
Judge.  He  himself  had  long  foreseen  and  predicted 
his  own  martyrdom.  Writing  in  1547  to  Abel  Pepin, 
one  of  Calvin's  intimate  friends  in  Geneva,  he  states: 

29 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

"  Mihi  oh  earn  rem  moriendum  esse  certo  scio;  sed 
non  propterea  animo  deficior,  ut  fiam  discipuliis 
similis  prceceptori."  "^ 

Again,  in  the  Christianismi  Eestitutio  he 
writes :  "  If  now  thou  shouldst  endure  the  cross  and 
death  for  Christ,  remember  only  that  thou  owest 
these  things  to  Christ  who  suffered  them  for  thee. 
Consider,  again,  that  martyrdom  is  no  death  to  thee, 
but  life  itself  and  the  destruction  of  death.  Death 
for  Christ  is  not  to  be  feared  by  thee,  for  thou  owest 
it  and  it  is  precious  in  His  sight;  and  this  the  more 
so  as  it  is  not  death  to  thee,  but  the  dissolution  of 
Satan's  prison,  and  the  call  to  the  liberty  of  glory, 
life  itself  always  remaining  living  in  Christ."  *  Thus 
prepared,  he  was  able  to  face  his  persecutors  without 
fear,  absolutely  refusing  to  recant  or  compromise. 
In  a  note  to  Calvin  from  the  prison  he  writes :  "  I 
defy  thee,  murderer,  and  I  shall  prove  it  by  my  con- 
duct. In  a  cause  so  just  I  am  constant,  and  I  have 
no  fear  of  death."  ® 

The  trial  drawing  to  a  close,  and  the  verdict  being 
self-evident,  Servetus  asked  for  a  last  interview  with 
Calvin.     Instead  of  begging  for  mercy,  or  offering 

^ "  That    I    am    about    to  HisTORiA    Michaelis    Ser- 

die  for  this  cause  I  know  for  veti  by  H.  A.  Allwoerden. 

certain,   but   I   do  not  lose  Helmstad  1727.     A  copy  of 

courage  on  that  account,  in  this  rare  work  is  preserved 

order  that  I  may  become  a  by  the  Academy  of  the  New 

disciple  similar  to  his  Mas-  Church,     Bryn  Athyn,     Pa. 

ter."     Tlie   original   of   this  '  R.   545. 

and    other    letters    by    Ser-  •Allwoerden,  p.   96. 
vetus    is    published    in    the 

30 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

some  kind  of  retraction,  Servetus  simply  asked  Calvin 
to  pardon  him  for  inconsiderate  personal  treatment. 
The  latter  loftily  assured  him  that  the  quarrel  was 
not  personal  but  theological,  and  immediately  began 
to  excuse  his  course  by  referring  to  the  welfare  of 
the  Church.     '''  Qui  s' excuse,  s' accuse  "  I 

The  final  sentence  was  pronounced  upon  him  an 
hour  before  noon  of  October  27th.  Among  the 
offenses  recapitulated  in  the  charge  we  find  items 
such  as  these:  "having  perfidiously  broken  and 
escaped  from  the  prison  of  Vienne,  where  he  had 
been  confined  [by  the  Eoman  Catholic  Inquisition!] 
because  of  the  wicked  and  abominable  opinions  con- 
fessed in  his  book ;"  .  .  .  "  Continuing  obsti- 
nate in  his  opinions,  not  only  against  the  true  Chris- 
tian religion,  but  as  an  arrogant  innovator  and 
inventor  of  heresies  against  Popery  [ !],  which  led 
to  his  being  burned  in  effigy  at  Vienne,  along  with 
five  bales  of  his  book."  For  these  and  similar  offenses 
Servetus  was  condemned  "  to  be  bound  and  taken 
to  Champel,  and  there,  being  fastened  to  a  stake,  to 
be  burned  alive." 

The  sentence  having  been  read,  and  the  staff  broken 
over  the  prisoner,  a  terrible  silence  ensued,  which 
was  finally  broken  by  Servetus  entreating  for  a  less 
cruel  manner  of  death,  "lest,  through  excess  of 
suffering  I  might  prove  faithless  to  myself,  and  belie 
the  convictions  of  my  life."  The  appeal  meeting 
with  no  response,  the  prisoner  went  on  to  say  that 

31 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

"  he  had  done  nothing  to  deserve  death ;  he  prayed 
God,  nevertheless,  to  forgive  his  enemies  and  perse- 
cutors," and  he  ended  his  appeal  by  the  prayer: 
"  0  God,  save  my  soul !  0  Jesu,  Son  of  the  eternal 
God,  have  mercy  upon  me." 

A  solemn  procession  was  now  formed,  winding  its 
way  through  the  narrow  crowded  streets  to  the  place 
of  execution.  Eye-witnesses  relate  that  Calvin,  seated 
by  a  window,  smiled  as  his  victim  passed  by.^"  Farel, 
who  had  been  appointed  to  offer  the  last  consolations 
to  the  prisoner,  walked  by  his  side  and  unceasingly 
tried  to  make  him  admit  the  errors  of  his  theological 
ways.  But  in  vain;  he  had  no  answer  other  than 
broken  ejaculations  and  invocations  on  the  name  of 
God.  "  Is  there  no  word  in  your  mouth  but  the 
name  of  God  ? "  asked  Farel  indignantly.  "  On 
whom  can  I  now  call  but  on  God  ? '  •  was  the  answer. 
Questions  as  to  wife  or  child,  if  he  had  either,  elic- 
ited no  reply.  "  We  exhorted,"  wrote  Farel  after- 
wards, "  we  entreated,  but  made  no  impression.  He 
beat  his  breast,  asked  pardon  for  his  faults,  invoked 
God,  confessed  his  Savior,  and  much  besides,  but 
would  not  acknowledge  the  Son  of  God,  save  in  the 
man  Jesus." 

"  When  he  came  in  sight  of  the  fatal  pile,  the 
wretched  Servetus  prostrated  himself  on  the  ground. 


"  Sunt  qui  aflirmcmt  Cal-  subrisse,  vuUu  sub  sinu 
vinum  cum  vidisset  ad  sup-  vcstis  levitcr  dejccto.  (All- 
plicium       dud       Scrvctum       WOERDEN,  p.  160). 

82 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

and  for  a  while  was  absorbed  in  prayer.  Rising 
and  advancing  a  few  steps,  he  found  himself  in  the 
hand  of  the  executioner,  by  whom  he  was  made  to 
sit  on  a  block,  his  feet  just  reaching  the  ground. 
His  body  was  then  bound  to  the  stake  behind  him 
by  several  turns  of  an  iron  chain,  whilst  his  neck 
was  secured  in  like  manner  by  the  coils  of  a  hempen 
rope.  His  two  books, — the  one  in  manuscript  sent  to 
Calvin  in  confidence  six  or  eight  years  before  for 
his  strictures,  and  a  copy  of  the  one  lately  printed  in 
Vienne, — were  then  fastened  to  his  waist,  and  his 
head  was  encircled  in  mockery  with  a  chaplet  of 
straw  and  green  twigs  bestrewed  with  brimstone. 
The  deadly  torch  was  then  applied  to  the  faggots 
and  flashed  in  his  face;  and  the  brimstone  catching, 
and  the  flames  rising,  wrung  from  the  victim  such  a 
cry  of  anguish  as  struck  terror  into  the  surrounding 
crowd.  After  this  he  was  bravely  silent;  but  the 
wood  being  purposely  green,  although  the  people 
aided  the  executioner  in  heaping  the  faggots  upon 
him,  a  long  half-hour  elapsed  before  he  ceased  to 
show  signs  of  life  and  suffering.  Immediately  before 
giving  up  the  ghost,  with  a  last  expiring  effort  he 
cried  aloud :  '  Jesu,  Thou  Son  of  the  Eternal  God, 
have  compassion  upon  me ! '  All  was  then  hushed 
save  the  hissing  and  crackling  of  the  green  wood ; 
and  by-and-by  there  remained  no  more  of  what  had 
been  Michael  Servetus  but  a  charred  and  blackened 
trunk  and  a  liandful  of  ashes.  So  died,  in  advance 
3  33 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

of  his  age,  one  of  the  gifted  sons  of  God,  the  victim, 
of  religious  fanaticism  and  personal  hate."  (Willis, 
p.  487.) 

6.  THE  AFTERMATH. 

Not  even  the  death  of  his  victim  could  satisf}' 
Calvin's  hatred.  Before  long,  a  wave  of  reaction  set 
in  among  the  citizens  of  Geneva,  many  of  whom 
were  profoundly  impressed  not  only  with  the  forti- 
tude and  constancy  shown  by  Servetus,  but  also  with 
Calvin's  bloodthirstiness  and  shiftiness.  It  was  well 
known  that  Calvin  in  earlier  years  had  emphatically 
denounced  the  "  right  of  the  Sword  "  in  dealing  with 
heresy.  In  the  earlier  editions  of  his  Institutions 
he  had  said,  for  instance,  speaking  of  heretics: 
"  Drowning,  beheading,  and  burning,  are  far  from 
being  the  proper  means  of  bringing  them  and  their 
like  to  proper  views  "  (Book  I,  Chap.  2 ;  Willis,  pp. 
301,  512). 

Before  the  year  was  over  Calvin  found  himself 
forced  to  explain,  excuse,  and  defend  himself,  and 
early  in  1554  he  published  in  Latin  and  French  his 
Defense  of  the  Orthodox  Faith  respecting  the 
Holy  Trinity  against  the  Errors  of  Michael 
Servetus,  a  work  which  was  far  less  a  defense  of 
the  Trinity  than  a  defense  of  his  own  course  and  a 
renewed  attack  upon  his  dead  adversary.  "  It  can 
hardly  soften  our  judgment  of  Calvin,"  says  Prof. 
Emerton,  '•  that  in  this  attack  upon  an  enemy  now 

34 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

bcyoiul  the  reach  of  his  assault,  he  should  liavc 
eliosen  to  employ  the  foulest  and  most  insulting  lan- 
guage in  his  choice  vocabulary  of  abuse "  {e.g., 
"  when  Servetus  and  his  like  presume  to  meddle  with 
the  mysteries  of  religion,  it  is  as  if  a  swine  came 
thrusting  his  snout  into  a  treasury  of  sacred  things." 
—Willis,  p.  500). 

x\  letter  written  by  Calvin  to  his  special  friend 
and  supporter,  Bullinger,  of  Zurich,  dated  Nov.  3rd, 
1554,  plainly  exhibits  an  uneasy  conscience,  or,  more 
likely,  a  fear  of  consequences  and  a  desire  to  shift 
responsibility.  "  Others  may  construe  me  more 
liarshly;  say  that  I  am  a  master  in  severitj'^  and 
{•ruelty,  and  that  with  my  pen  I  lacerate  the  body 
of  tlie  man  who  came  to  his  death  through  me. 
Some,  too,  there  are, — not  otherwise  evilly  disposed, — 
who  say  that  the  world  is  silent  as  to  what  was  done, 
and  that  no  attempt  is  made  to  refute  my  arguments 
on  the  punishment  of  heresy,  through  fear  of  my 
displeasure.  But  it  is  well  that  I  have  you  for  the 
associate  of  my  fault,  if,  indeed,  there  be  any  fault; 
for  you  were  my  authority  and  instigator.  Look  to 
it,  therefore,  that  you  gird  3-ourself  for  the  fight." 
(Willis,  p.  509.) 

Evil,  however,  contains  its  own  punishment,  and 
the  mills  of  God,  though  slowly,  grind  exceeding 
fine.  The  hatred  of  Calvin  against  Servetus  was 
theological  and  spiritual ;  it  was  the  doctrines  of 
Servetus  that  he  hated,  rather  than  the  person, — 

35 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

the  doctrine  of  the  supreme  and  sole  Divinity  of 
Jesus  Christ,  the  doctrine  of  the  freedom  of  man  in 
spiritual  things,  the  doctrine  of  charity  and  good 
works.  The  author  of  the  doctrine  of  Predestination 
and  Infant  Damnation  carried  with  him  this  eon- 
firmed  hatred  into  the  spiritual  world ;  it  had  become 
the  ruling  love  of  his  life  and  the  shaper  of  his 
destiny. 

As  to  Calvin's  ultimate  fate  in  the  life  after  death, 
Swedenborg  gives  the  following  account  in  the  True 
Christian  Religiox,  no.  798: 

"  In  respect  to  Calvin  I  have  heard  as  follows : 
1.  When  he  first  entered  the  spiritual  world  he  fully 
believed  that  he  Avas  still  in  the  world  where  he  liad 
been  born.  The  angels  who  in  the  beginning  asso- 
ciated with  him,  told  him  that  he  was  now  in  their 
world,  and  not  in  his  former  world,  but  he  said, 
'  I  have  the  same  body,  the  same  hands,  and  the  same 
senses.' 

"  The  angels  then  told  him  that  he  was  now  in  a 
substantial  body,  and  that  formerly  he  had  been  not 
only  in  that  same  body  but  also  in  a  material  body 
which  invested  the  substantial  one;  and  that  the 
material  body  had  been  cast  off,  while  the  substantial 
body,  from  wliich  a  man  is  a  man,  still  remained. 

"  This  he  at  first  understood,  but  the  next  day  he 
returned  to  his  former  belief  that  he  was  still  in 
the  world  where  he  had  been  born.  This  was  because 
he  was  a  sensual  man  and  had  no  other  belief  than 

36 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

what  he  could  draw  from  the  objects  of  the  bodily 
senses ;  and  from  this  it  came  about  that  he  drew  all 
the  dogmas  of  his  faith  as  conclusions  from  his 
self-intelligence  and  not  from  the  Word.  His  having 
quoted  the  Word  was  in  order  to  win  the  assent  of 
the  common  people. 

"  II.  After  this  first  period,  having  left  the  angels, 
he  wandered  about  inquiring  for  those  who  from 
ancient  times  had  believed  in  Predestination.  He 
was  told  that  these  had  been  removed  from  that 
place  and  had  been  shut  up  and  covered  over,  and 
that  there  was  no  way  open  to  them  except  rearward 
beneath  the  earth.  The  disciples  of  Godeschalcus,^^ 
however,  still  went  about  freely  and  sometimes 
assembled  in  a  place  which  was  called  Pyris,  in  the 
spiritual  language.  As  Calvin  earnestly  desired  their 
company,  he  was  led  to  an  assembly  where  some  of 
them  were  standing,  and  when  he  came  among  them 
he  was  in  his  heart's  delight  and  ])ound  himself  to 
them  by  an  interior  friendship. 

"  Til.  But  when  the  followers  of  Godeschalcus 
had  been  led  away  to  their  brethren  in  tlie  cavern, 
Calvin  became  weary  and  therefore  sought  for  an 
asylum  in  various  places.  Finally  he  was  received 
into  a  certain  societ}'  made  up  whoUy  of  simple- 
minded  people,  some  of  wlioni  were  also  religious. 
And  when  he  saw  that  they  neither  knew  nor  could 

" A  vagabond  monk,  extreme  doctrine  of  I*ie- 
(806-867)   who  preached  an       destination. 

37 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

understand  anything  about  Predestination,  he  betook 
himself  to  one  corner  of  the  society,  and  there  he 
hid  himself  for  a  long  time,  not  opening  his  mouth 
on  any  ecclesiastical  matter.  This  was  provided  in 
order  that  he  might  withdraw  from  his  error  respect- 
ing Predestination,  and  in  order  that  the  ranks  of 
those  who,  after  the  Synod  of  Dort,  adhered  to  that 
detestable  heresy,  might  be  filled  up.  All  of  these 
were  gradually  sent  away  to  their  fellows  in  the 
cavern. 

"  IV.  At  length,  when  the  modern  Predestinarians 
inquired  where  Calvin  was,  he  was  found,  after  a 
search  for  him,  on  the  confines  of  a  society  composed 
entirely  of  simple-minded  folks.  He  was  therefore 
called  away  from  there  and  was  brought  to  a  gov- 
ernor who  was  filled  with  similar  dregs.  The  latter 
now  took  him  into  his  house  and  guarded  him,  and 
this  lasted  until  the  New  Heaven  began  to  be  estab- 
lished by  the  Lord.  Then,  when  the  governor  who 
guarded  him  was  ejected  together  with  his  crew, 
Calvin  betook  himself  to  a  meretricious  house,  and 
remained  there  for  some  time. 

"  V.  As  he  then  enjoyed  the  libei-ty  of  wandering 
about,  and  also  was  allowed  to  come  near  the  place 
where  I  was  sojourning,  I  was  permitted  to  converse 
with  him,  at  first  concerning  the  New  Heaven  which 
at  this  day  is  being  formed  out  of  those  who  acknowl- 
edge the  Lord  alone  as  the  God  of  heaven  and  earth, 
acitording  to  ills  own  words  in  Matthew  28:  18.     I 

38 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

told  him  that  such  believe  that  '  He  and  the  Father 
are  one'  (John  10:30),  and  that  'He  is  in  the 
Father  and  the  Father  in  Him/  and  that  '  whosoever 
seeth  and  knoweth  Him,  seeth  and  knoweth  the 
Father'  (John  14:  6-11),  and  that  thus  there  is  one 
God  in  the  Church  as  there  is  in  Heaven. 

"  \^I.  After  I  had  said  these  things  he  was  silent 
at  first,  as  was  his  habit,  but  after  half  an  hour  he 
broke  the  silence  and  asked :  '  Was  not  Christ  a  man, 
the  son  of  Mary  who  was  betrothed  to  Joseph  ?  How 
can  a  man  be  adored  as  God  ? ' 

"  I  answered,  '  Is  not  Jesus  Christ,  our  Eedeemer 
and  Savior,  both  God  and  Man  ? ' 

"  He  replied,  '  He  is  both  God  and  Man ;  never- 
theless, the  Divinity  is  not  His,  but  the  Father's.' 

"  I  asked  again,  '  Where,  then,  is  Christ  ? ' 

"  He  answered,  '  In  the  lowest  parts  of  heaven,' 
and  he  gave  as  proof  of  this  the  humiliation  of 
Christ  before  the  Father,  and  that  He  allowed  Him- 
self to  be  crucified.  To  this  Calvin  added  some 
jocular  remarks  about  the  worshipping  of  Christ, 
which  then  broke  forth  into  the  memory  which  he 
carried  with  him  from  the  world,  which  were,  in 
brief,  that  the  worship  of  Christ  was  nothing  but 
idolatr}\  He  wanted  to  add,  further,  things  unfit 
to  be  spoken  concerning  that  worship,  but  the  angels 
who  were  with  me  shut  his  lips. 

"  YII.  Then  I,  from  a  zeal  to  convert  him,  said 
that  the  Lord  our  Savior  is  not  only  both  God  aaid 

39 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Man,  but  that  in  Him,  moreover,  God  is  Man  and 
Man  is  God.  i\.nd  this  I  confirmed  by  the  teaching 
of  Paul  that  '  in  Him  dwelleth  all  the  fulness  of 
the  Godhead  bodily'  (1  Col.  2:  9),  and  by  the  state- 
ment of  John  that  '  He  is  the  true  God  and  life 
eternal'  (1  Epist.  5:20),  as  also  by  the  words  of 
the  Lord  Himself  that '  it  is  the  Father's  will  that  all 
who  believe  on  the  Son  shall  have  eternal  life,  and 
that  he  who  believes  not  shall  not  see  life,  but  the 
wrath  of  God  abideth  on  him '  (John  3:  36;  6:  40), 
and  finally  by  the  declaration  of  faith  called  Atha- 
nasian,  which  declares  that  in  Christ,  God  and  Man 
are  not  two  but  one,  and  are  in  one  Person,  like  the 
soul  and  body  in  man. 

"  VIII.  Having  heard  these  things  Calvin  an- 
swered, '  What  are  all  these  things  that  you  have 
brought  forward  from  the  Word,  but  empty  sounds? 
Is  not  the  Word  the  book  of  all  heresies,  and  thus 
like  the  weathercocks  on  house-tops  and  ships'  marts, 
which  turn  every  way  according  to  the  wind?  It 
is  Predestination  alone  that  determines  all  things 
pertaining  to  religion.  This  is  the  habitation  or 
tabernacle  in  which  all  things  of  religion  meet 
together,  and  the  shrine  and  sanctuary  there  is  faith, 
through  which  justification  and  salvation  is  effected. 
Has  any  man  freedom  of  choice  in  spiritual  things? 
Is  not  everything  of  salvation  a  free  gift?  Any 
arguments,  therefore,  against  these  principles,  and 
thus  against  Predestination,  I  hear  and  perceive  no 

40 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

nilierwise  than  as  belcliiiigs  from  the  stomach,  or  as 
rumblings  of  the  bowels.  Because  this  is  so,  I  have 
tliought  to  myself  that  any  church  where  anything 
else  is  taught, — even  though  it  be  from  the  Word, — 
and  any  congi-ogation  there  assembled,  is  like  a  pen 
of  beasts  containing  both  sheep  and  wolves,  but  with 
the  wolves  muzzled  by  the  laws  of  civil  justice  lest 
they  break  forth  upon  the  sheep  (those  predestined 
being  meant  by  the  sheep),  and  that  the  preaching 
and  praying  there  are  like  so  much  hiccoughing. 
But  I  will  give  you  my  confession  of  faith;  it  is 
this:  There  is  a  God,  and  He  is  omnipotent.  And 
there  is  no  salvation  for  any  one  except  those  who  are 
elected  and  predestined  by  God  the  Father,  and  every- 
body else  is  condemned  to  his  lot,  that  is,  his  fate.' 

"  IX.  Upon  hearing  these  things  I  exclaimed  in 
indignation,  '  What  you  say  is  heinous.  Begone, 
wicked  spirit!  Do  you  not  know  that  you  are  in 
the  spiritual  world,  and  that  there  is  a  heaven  and 
a  hell,  and  that  Predestination  involves  that  some 
have  been  written  down  for  heaven  and  some  for 
hell?  How,  then,  can  you  form  for  yourself  any 
other  idea  of  God  than  as  being  a  tyrant  who  admits 
his  favorites  into  his  city,  and  sends  the  rest  to  the 
rack  ?     Shame  on  you ! ' 

"  X.  I  then  read  to  him  what  is  written  in  the 
book  of  dogmas  of  the  Evangelicals,  entitled  Formula 
GoxcoKDi.i-:,  in  regard  to  the  erroneous  doctrine  of 
the  Calvinist^.  concerning  the  worship  of  the  Lord 

41 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

and  concerning  Predestination.     Their  doctrine  of 
the  worship  of  the  Lord  is  thus  defined : 

'  It  is  damnable  idolatry,  if  the  confidence  and  faith 
of  the  heart  are  placed  in  Christ,  not  only  according 
to  His  Divine,  but  also  according  to  His  human  nature, 
and  the  honor  of  worship  is  directed  to  both.' 

"  And  Predestination  is  thus  defined : 

'  Christ  did  not  die  for  all  men  but  only  for  the  elect. 
God  has  created  the  greater  part  of  men  for  eternal 
damnation,  and  does  not  wish  that  the  greater  part 
should  be  converted  and  live.  Those  who  are  elect 
and  born  again  cannot  lose  the  faith  and  the  Holy 
Spirit,  even  though  they  should  commit  all  kinds 
of  great  sins  and  crimes.  But  those  who  are  not  elect 
are  necessarily  damned,  nor  can  they  attain  to  salvation 
even  if  they  were  to  be  baptized  a  thousand  times,  or 
if  they  were  to  partake  of  the  Sacrament  every  day, 
and  besides  lead  as  holy  and  blameless  a  life  as  it  is 
ever  possible  to  live.  (Leipzig  edition  of  1756,  pp.  837, 
838.) 

"  (Having  read  this,  I  asked  him  whether  the  things 
written  in  that  book  were  from  his  own  doctrine  or 
not.  He  replied  that  they  were,  but  that  he  did  not 
remember  wliether  those  very  words  had  flowed  from 
his  pen,  although  they  might  have  come  from  his 
lips. 

"  XI.  When  the  servants  of  the  Lord  liad  heard 
these  things,  they  all  withdrew  from  him,  whereupon 
he  hastily  betook  himself  to  a  road  leading  to  a 
cavern  where  those  are  who  have  confirmed  them- 
selves in  the  execrable  dogma  of  Predestination.  I 
afterwards  spoke  with  some  of  those  imprisoned  in 

42 


CA^^'^        (     et'^J^^i^^^vf^^J 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

that  cavern,  and  asked  about  their  lot.  They  said 
they  were  forced  to  labor  for  their  food,  that  they 
were  all  enemies  of  one  another,  that  every  one 
sought  for  an  occasion  to  do  evil  to  the  other,  and 
that  they  also  did  this  whenever  they  found  the 
slightest  opi)ortunity,  and  that  tliis  was  the  delight 
of  their  lives." 


43 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 


PART  II. 

THE  THEOLOGY  OF  MICHAEL 
SERVETUS. 

1.  SERVETUS  AS  A  NATURAL  PHILOSOPHER. 

We  may  now  turn  to  the  main  subject  of  the 
present  treatise,  the  theological  system  of  Michael 
Servetus,  and  its  wonderful  approximation  to  the 
Doctrines  revealed  by  the  Lord  through  Emanuel 
Swedenborg.  Like  the  latter,  Sen'etus  was  not  only 
a  scientific  theologian,  but  also  a  theological  scien- 
tist,— a  natural  philosoplier  whose  eyes  were  open 
to  the  operation  of  spiritual  law  in  natural  things. 
"  To  Servetus,"  observes  Tollin,  "  there  was  nothing 
Divine  without  an  elementary  basis,  and  nothing 
mundane  without  a  Divine  content.  Nature  to  him 
became  ti-anslucent  with  the  Spirit  of  God,  while 
God  to  him  became  concrete.  To  Servetus  all  nature 
serves  for  illustration  of  Theology,  and  all  Theology 
serves  for  the  fulfilment  of  nature.  The  meta- 
physical world  he  looks  upon  in  a  physical  manner, 
and,  vice  versa,  the  whole  pliysical  world  he  con- 
ceives of  in  a  mystic-symbolic  manner.''  ^ 

Had  Servetus  been  satisfied  to  remain  in  the  service 
of  merely  natural   Science,  he  would   no  doubt  be 

'  Lk.husvstkm,    vol.    2    p.  177. 
44 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

reckoned  now  as  one  of  the  greatest  liglits  of  learn- 
ing of  the  sixteenth  century.  We  can  advance  tliis 
claim  without  fear  of  conti-adiction,  as  it  is  now 
universally  acknowledged  that  this  Spanish  physi- 
cian was  actually  the  first  discoverer  of  the  circula- 
tion of  the  blood  through  the  lungs, — a  whole  century 
before  Harvey  more  fully  explained  this  process. 
And  this  momentous  discovery  Servetus  announces 
very  quiet!}',  almost  casually,  in  liis  last  book,  as  an 
illustration  of  his  doctrine  concerning  the  origin  and 
composition  of  the  human  soul.  The  announcement 
is  introduced  by  a  description  of  the  tliree  degrees  of 
the  blood,  or  the  three  bloods  or  spirits,  within  the 
body  of  man,  "derived  from,  the  suh.'^laiice  of  the 
three  superior  elements."  The  first  is  a  tmlvrnl 
spirit,  primarily  associated  with  the  red  blood  and 
communicated  from  the  arteries  to  the  veins  by  their 
"  anastomoses  " ;  the  second  is  the  vital  spirit,  whose 
seat  is  in  the  heart  itself ;  and  the  third  is  the  animal 
spirit,  which  is  like  a  ray  of  light  and  has  its  home 
in  the  brain  and  the  nerves.  He  then  proceeds  to 
show  how  the  blood  is  sent  from  the  right  to  the 
left  ventricle  of  the  heart,  not,  as  was  commonly 
supposed,  by  passing  through  the  middle  wall  of  the 
heart,  but  by  passing  first  through  the  pulmonary 
artery  into  the  lungs,  and  thence  through  the  pul- 
monary vein  into  the  left  ventricle  of  the  heart.  He 
announced  this  process  as  "  a  Divine  philosophy " 
(divinam  philosophiam.  adjungam),  because  he  re- 

45 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

garded  the  blood  in  its  three  degrees  as  the  soul 
itself  continually  arising  from  the  combination  of 
the  Spirit  of  God  in  the  atmospheres  with  the 
materials  taken  in  by  the  human  body,^ 

In  his  Christo-centric  Theology  Servetus  "  finds 
all  the  treasures  even  of  natural  science  hidden  in 
Christ,"  ^  and  also,  conversely,  he  finds  Christ  hidden 
in  all  things  of  nature.  Everj^thing  in  the  created 
universe  was  to  him  a  symbolic  representation  of 
the  eternal  Word  through  which  all  things  had  been 
created,  and  this  Word  was  the  soul  of  Christ. 

1.  THE  SPIRITUAL  SENSE  OF  SCRIPTURE. 

From  this  spiritual  \iew-point  of  Nature,  Servetus 
looked  upon  the  written  Word,  the  Sacred  Scripture, 
as  conveying  throughout  the  same  message  concern- 
ing the  Chriat  who  was,  and  who  is,  and  who  is  to 
come.  The  whole  Bible,  lie  maintains,  in  its  interior 
or  spiritual  sense  treats  of  Jesus  Christ  and  of  Him 
alone. 

This  conception,  however,  by  no  moans  dissolved 
his  faith  in  the  literal  sense;  nay,  it  established  the 
I^aw  and  the  Prophets  upon  a  new  and  surer  foun- 
dation. "  It  is  highly  significant,"  says  Prof.  Emer- 
ton,  "  that  from  the  start  he  was  impressed  with  what 
we  should  now  call  the  historical  view  of  theolog}'. 

-R.   168-181.         Allwoerden  p.  231.         '  R.  251. 
46 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

As  he  read  the  Old  Testament,  its  writers  seemed  to 
him  to  be  referring  to  things  that  their  hearers  would 
understand.  .  .  .  This  one  point  is  fairly  clear: 
that  Servetus  grasped,  as  no  one  up  to  his  time  had 
grasped,  this  one  central  notion  that,  whatever  the 
Divine  plan  may  have  been,  it  must  be  revealed  by 
the  long,  slow  movement  of  history.*'  Servetus, 
therefore,  based  his  Theology  upon  the  solid  bed- 
rock of  facts, — ^upon  the  literal  truth  of  the  Scrip- 
tures when  interpreted  in  the  light  of  contemporary 
history,  and  the  chief  and  central  fact  of  all  biblical 
history  he  believed  to  be — Christ,  the  incarnate 
Word. 

His  conception  of  the  twofold  sense  of  Scripture 
is  set  forth  at  length  in  the  preface  to  his  edition  of 
Pagnini's  Latin  Bible.  He  illustrates  his  doctrine 
by  the  peculiar  nature  of  the  Hebrew  language, 
''  which  is  full  of  hyperboles,  emphases,  concurrences, 
antitheses,  allusions,  and  other  things  of  the  kind. 
.  .  .  For  the  single  prophets  according  to  their 
letter  follow^ed  Histon,-,  wliich  prefigured  the  future 
in  which  tlie  mysteries  of  Christ  arc  fulfilled  accord- 
ing to  the  spirit;  for,  as  Paul  says,  all  things  re- 
ferred in  a  figure  to  these;  and,  as  John  says,  'the 
testimony  of  Jesus  Christ  is  the  spirit  of  prophecy ! ' 
.  .  .  The  whole  Hebrew  tongue  is  full  of  hyper- 
boles, containing  within  themselves  other  and  greater 
mysteries.  The  literal  sense,  therefore,  is  an  over- 
shadowing (obumbratio)  of  the  future  verity,  as,  for 

47 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

instance,  under  the  shadow  of  David  there  shines 
back  the  verity  referring  to  Christ  alone.  For  the 
historicals  of  David  in  the  Psalms  are  the  occasions 
for  predicting  concerning  Christ,  nay,  for  this  reason 
David  is  called  the  type  of  Christ.  Thus  it  is  said 
of  the  Israelitish  people  in  a  shadow,  '  Out  of  Egypt 
I  have  called  my  son,'  when  yet  this  truly  refers  to 
Christ  alone ;  so  that  we  say  that  the  literal  sense  is 
prophetical  of  Christ.  Add  to  this  that  this  book  is 
said  to  be  written  ivithin  and  luithout,  and  the  Scrip- 
ture manifestly  has  a  twofold  face,  like  a  sword 
sharpened  on  both  sides."  * 

He  further  says  that  "  in  the  person  of  Christ  arc 
fulfilled  all  the  figures  of  the  Law  and  all  the 
mysteries  of  the  ceremonies,  concerning  which  wc 
shall  speak  in  a  book  on  Circumcision ; "  '"  and  he 
also  promised  to  write  a  book  "  On  the  True  Under- 
standing of  the  Scriptures.-'  This,  as  far  as  we 
know,  was  never  composed,  and  we  cannot  tell  how 
far  he  entered  into  the  particulars  of  the  internal 
sense.  As  in  the  case  of  Origen,  so  with  Servetus, 
his  idea  of  the  spiritual  sense  was  only  a  general 
perception;  it  could  not  be  otherwise  without  a 
direct  new  Divine  Revelation  such  as  was  given 
through  Swedenborg.  In  various  passages  Servetus 
expresses  his  anticipation  of  such  a  new  Revelation, 
and  prays  for  the  day  when  "  Thy  book,  now  closed 
by  so  many  seals,  shall  be  opened  to  all." 

*  Allwoerden  p.  189,  190;  '  Allwoerden    p.    2.37. 

R.  673. 

48 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

At  the  trial  in  Geneva  Calvin  bronght  up  his 
victim's  method  of  historical  and  spiritual  interpre- 
tation as  an  evidence  of  the  "  insane  lust  of  Ser- 
vetus  to  destroy  faith."'  Servetus  then  "  developed 
at  length  liis  well  known  distinction  between  the 
literal  or  historical  sense,  and  the  spiritual  or  mj^s- 
tical.  According  to  the  first,  all  the  prophecies  re- 
ferred to  cont€mj)orary  historical  persons,  whereas 
in  the  latter  and  higher  sense  everything  had  refer- 
ence to  Christ,  as  indeed,  had  been  shown  by  the 
earlier  Church  Fathers."  ® 

While  Servetus  lacked  the  term  "  correspondences  " 
to  give  a  universally  comprehensive  expression  to  his 
ideas  of  allegories,  types,  figures,  shadows,  and 
images,  still  he  seems  to  have  grasped  the  essential 
idea  of  the  relation  of  heavenly  things  to  earthly 
tilings.  "  From  eternity,"  he  says,  "  the  images  or 
representations  of  all  things  are  in  God,  refulgent  in 
the  Divine  Wisdom  itself,  in  the  Word  of  God,  as  in 
an  architype."  ^  And  since  this  Divine  Wisdom  or 
Logos  by  which  all  things  were  created,  is  the  soul 
of  Christ,  it  follows  that  all  good  things  of  the 
created  universe,  no  less  than  all  things  of  the 
written  Word,  are  images  and  types  of  the  Christ 
who  made  them,  while  all  evil  things  are  the  images 
and  types  of  Antichrist. 

In  a  sublime  passage  he  refers  to  Peter  Lombard,* 
who  "  said  that  almost  every  syllable  of  the  New 

*  Trkchsel,   p.  229,  230.  '  A       lauious       scholastic 

'R.   137.  theologian,   1090-1164. 

4  49 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Testament  internally  points  to  the  immanent  Trinity, 
but  to  me  not  only  the  syllables  but  all  the  letters 
of  the  Bible,  and  the  mouth  of  the  sucklings,  nay, 
the  very  stones,  cry  out  towards  me  '  There  is  One 
God  and  there  is  One  Lord,  Jesus,  the  Christ!'"* 
And  he  compares  the  whole  Law  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment to  a  pregnant  woman  who  is  about  to  give  birth 
to  the  Divine  Son.^°  ISTot  only  the  Old  Testament, 
however,  but  also  the  New,  possesses  this  internal  or 
spiritual  sense,  for  all  the  acts  of  Christ  while  He 
AAas  in  the  world  have  an  inner  secret  sense  beside 
the  external  symbol.^^ 

Like  Origen,  Servetus  was  unable  to  explain  the 
internal  sense  in  detail,  and  he  generally  contents 
himself  with  pointing  out  only  their  application  to 
the  Lord  Himself.  His  interpretations,  of  course, 
are  mere  hints  or  suggestions  of  the  Divine  unfold- 
ing which  was  to  be  given  later  through  Swedenborg, 
but  nonetheless  he  often  comes  remarkably  close  to 
the  real  internal  meaning.  Thus  he  shows  that 
"  everything  in  the  Jewish  Church  took  place  by 
means  of  representatives,  not  for  the  sake  of  the 
Jews,  who  did  not  understand  these  things,  but  for 
the  sake  of  us,  the  followers  of  Christ."  ^-  His  dis- 
criminations are  often  quite  remarkable.  "  Circum- 
cision," he  says,  "  was  not  a  type  of  Baptism,  as  has 
been  supposed,  l)ut  it  was  a  type  of  that  spiritual 
circumcision    which    takes    place    in    regeneration. 

•E.  27fe.  '"R.  259.  "  E.    20  ft.         "R.   482. 

50 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

Otherwise  one  corporeal  act  would  he  the  type  of 
another  corporeal  act."  ^^  The  Apocalypse  interested 
him  deeply,  and  his  occasional  attempts  at  interpre- 
tation are  always  suggestive.  Thus  the  three  unclean 
spirits  like  frogs,  proceeding  out  of  the  mouth  of  the 
Dragon  and  the  beast  and  the  false  prophet  (Rev. 
16:  13),  signified  the  false  doctrine  of  three  persons 
in  the  (rodhead,  and  he  follows  up  this  analogy  with 
scientific  precision  and  proofs  drawn  from  Zoology.'* 
Apologizing  for  having  called  the  letter  of  the 
AVord  "  a  shadow,"  he  states  that  "  it  is  from  neces- 
sity I  have  been  forced  to  use  this  expression,  because 
1  could  find  no  other  term  by  which  to  signify  this 
Divine  mystery.  Nor  would  I  suggest  that  the  Word 
is  a  shadow^  that  is  past  and  remains  no  more." 
"  Rather,  the  substance  of  the  body  of  Christ  is  at 
the  present  day  the  same  which  formerly  was  the 
substance  of  the  Word."  "  Moreover,  with  Paul  I 
have  for  good  reasons  called  the  Law,  and  everything 
that  was  under  the  Law — and  thus  also  the  Word 
under  the  Law,  and  the  Spirit,  and  Jehovah  Him- 
self,— a  shadow  of  the  things  to  come."  (Col.  2: 
17;  Heb.  8:5,  10:  1.)  "For  in  all  the  things  that 
were  under  the  Law,  Christ  was  shadowed  forth  and 
represented.  They  are  the  sacred  hulls  and  types 
of  the  good  things  to  come.  And  therefore  I  have 
been  willing  to  call  everything  in  the  Law  a  shadow, 
in  order  to  show  that  the  body  itself,  i.e.,  the  Truth 

"R.  415.        "]\.  -k;.-}. 
51 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

itself,  was  to  be  found  in  Christ.''  ^^  "  For  in  every 
shadow  there  is  at  the  same  time  a  certain  image. 
And  thus  in  the  shadow  of  the  Old  Testament  Dis- 
pensation there  is  contained  the  shadow-image  of 
Christ.  I^or  is  the  shadow  any  absolute  darkness  but 
only  a  diminished  Light."  ^^  "  God  Himself  is  the 
Light,  the  eternal  Sun.  Now  in  a  certain  manner 
the  ideal  God-like  Man,  Christ,  in  proceeding  from 
God  to  come  to  the  earth,  comes  between  the  Sun  and 
the  earth.  And  in  thus  coming  He  casts  His  shadow 
before  Him,  and  this,  the  shadow  reflecting  the 
figure  of  Christ  on  the  earth,  is  what  is  seen  in  the 
types  of  the  Old  Testament.  God  Himself  is  as  it 
were  concealed  behind  the  body  of  the  coming  Christ, 
and  is  invisible  to  the  earth  until  Christ,  the  Jjight 
from  Light,  appears  upon  the  earth.  Then,  indeed, 
the  darkening  of  the  Sun  is  past,  and  there  is  again 
a  free  view  of  the  Sun.  But  the  shadows  themselves 
always  referred  back  to  the  Light,  for  shadows  can 
be  cast  only  when  there  is  light  behind  the  body. 
And  thus  also  the  obscure  Oracle  of  the  Word  refers 
back  to  God:  but  God  Himself  can  be  seen  only  in 
tlie  Incarnate  Word,  in  the  fnll  radiance  of  His 
Glory,— Christ."  '' 

One  final  quotation:  '' Tlic  whole  secret  of  the 
Word  was  the  glorification  of  the  Man,  Christ" 
(Tofum  Verhl  arcnnum  crni  hujiis  Hominis  glon- 
ficatio.y^ 

"  E.  2  &,  5  a,  9  o.  "  Diai,.  I.  2  6. 

"  R.  202.  "  R.  579. 

52 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

3.  THE  SPIRITUAL  WORLD. 

With  a  perception,  such  as  Servetus  enjoyed,  of 
the  spiritual  in  nature  and  of  the  spiritual  in  the 
Word  of  God,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find  that  he 
enjoyed  also  an  unusual  illumination  in  regard  to 
the  laws  and  the  life  of  the  spiritual  world.  Though 
his  teachings  on  this  subject  bear  an  astonishing 
resemblance  to  some  of  the  things  revealed  by 
Swedenborg,  it  must  be  remembered  that  he  did  not 
lay  claim  to  any  new  or  iiiunediate  revelation,  but 
simply  drew  his  conclusions  from  the  statements  in 
the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  Some  of  his  state- 
ments, indeed,  are  obscure  and  even  fallacious,  but 
it  is  not  our  purpose  to  dwell  on  these  in  the  present 
brief  treatise,  but  to  bring  out  those  things  which 
are  in  most  striking  harmony  with  the  Doctrine  of 
the  Xew  Jerusalem. 

In  respect  to  the  spiritual  nature  of  man,  Serve- 
tus sharply  differentiates  between  the  Spirit,  the 
Soul,  and  the  Body.  By  the  Spirit  he  means  the 
inmost  vessel  receptive  of  life,  that  which  Sweden- 
borg terms  the  Soul  or  the  "  human  internal."  Ser- 
vetus also  calls  it  '*  the  internal  man,"  and  under- 
stands it  to  be  the  supreme  presence  and  dwelling 
place  of  the  Spirit  of  God, — in  itself  Divine  and 
incorruptible. 

The  Soul,  on  the  other  hand,  with  Servetus  is 
that  which  Swedenborg  terms  the  Spirit  or  the  inter- 

53 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

mediate  Mind.  This,  Servetus  says,  is  an  organic 
spiritual  body,  composed  of  substances  from  the 
higher  elements  or  atmospheres,  consisting  of  actual 
and  divisible  particles,  separated  from  each  other  by 
interstices,  and  therefore  interpenetrable  by  forces 
and  substances  acting  from  within  and  from  without. 
In  the  beginning  this  spiritual  body  was  interpene- 
trated only  by  the  Spirit  of  God,  but  since  the  fall 
of  man  it  is  interpenetrated  also  by  Satanic  inspira- 
tions. It  is  not  a  purely  spiritual  substance,  how- 
ever, for  after  death  it  carries  with  it  something 
essential  from  the  substance  of  the  material  body 
(ab  ipsa  corporis  substantia  essentialitcr  aliquid 
accipiunt)  .^^  Students  of  Swedenborg  will  recognize 
here  something  resembling  the  doctrine  of  the 
"  limbus.*' 

Servetus  refers  approvingly  to  the  ancients  as 
teaching  that  "angels  and  souls  are  spiritual  bodies, 
consisting  of  the  finest  substances  of  nature,  which 
appear  almost  incorporeal,  but  possess  also  corrupt- 
ible nature."  -°  The  spiritual  bodies  of  all  men, 
having  become  corrupted,  would  inevitably  have  per- 
ished, had  not  Christ  by  His  Redemption  infused 
new  life  into  them  and  rendered  them  inmiortal.-^ 
So  substantial  is  this  spiritual  body  of  man  that 
Servetus  frequently  speaks  of  the  instruments,  the 
vessels,  the  arteries  of  the  soul.  It  is  built  up  out 
of  the  purer  blood,  and  is  etherial  and  full  of  light. 

»R.   228.  "OR.   223.  ="  R.  551. 

54 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

After  death,  this  human  substantial  body  arises  in 
a  human  substantial  form,  in  the  same  himian  shape 
wliich  it  had  possessed  on  eartli.  For  not  only  the 
angels,  but  also  human  souls,  possess  the  human 
shape  because  created  in  the  image  of  Christ,  the 
Divine  Man,  their  eternal  prototype.--  Immediately 
after  the  resurrection  comes  Purgatory,  which 
Servetus  calls  a  baptismal  fire  by  which  everything 
impure  is  burned  out  of  the  soul.  This  fire,  there- 
fore, is  not  so  much  for  the  sake  of  punishment  for 
past  sins,  as  rather  for  the  sake  of  a  final  purifica- 
tion.-^ "  As  Christ  receives  the  souls  of  his  faithful 
after  their  departure,  so  also  He  purifies  them  both 
in  this  life  and  in  the  other,  through  this  reception, 
and  the  fire  of  His  Spirit  consumes  the  dross  by  its 
flame."  =^* 

While  believing  thus  in  a  state  of  vastation,  pre- 
paratory to  the  entrance  of  the  faithful  into  heaven, 
Servetus  utterly  rejects  the  Roman  doctrine  of  inter- 
cession by  masses,  prayers,  etc.,  for  the  dead. 
"  Everybody  must  carry  his  own  debts,  and  pay  unto 
the  uttermost  farthing.  As  the  tree  falleth,  so  it 
lieth."  " 

The  separation  of  the  blessed  from  the  damned 
takes  place  at  death.  Those  who  depart  without 
having  been  reborn  through  Christ  remain  in  hell 
forever.  But  of  those  who  are  to  be  saved,  some  are 
purified  in  this  world,  and  others  more  in  the  world 

="R.    276.         '"R.  723-724.         "  R.  724.         *R.  .540. 
55 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

to  come.  But  the  fire  by  which  they  are  purged  is 
by  no  means  the  tormenting  fire  of  hell,  but  a  whole- 
some fiery  consummation.  And  these  good  spirits, 
he  says,  "  do  not  rejoice  if  we  pray  for  them,  but  they 
do  rejoice  if  we  amend  our  lives."  -® 

In  respect  to  Heaven,  Servetus  teaches  that 
"  wherever  Christ  is  there  He  forms  Heaven  round 
about  Himself."  -^  Since  the  time  of  the  Ascension, 
Christ  indeed  dwells  especially  in  the  third  heaven 
where  He  is  the  all  in  all  and  fills  all  and  every- 
thing with  His  presence,  but  nevertheless  He  is  not 
confined  to  any  special  place  in  Heaven,  for  He  is 
above  all  space,  even  as  He  is  above  all  time.  He 
dwells  therefore  in  every  part  of  Heaven,  and  at 
the  same  time  is  also  with  us  on  earth.-^  But  in 
Heaven  "  His  presence  will  be  so  sensibly  felt  that 
we  sliall  be  able  to  perceive  Him  with  all  our  senses, 
— we  shall  see  Him,  hear  Him,  touch  Him,  smell 
Him,  and  taste  Him."  -® 

From  the  letter  of  Scripture  it  is  evident  to  Ser- 
vetus that  there  are  three  heavens :  "  In  the  begin- 
ning God  created  Heaven  and  earth."  Heaven,  here, 
in  the  Hebrew,  is  Shainayiui,  literally  "  the  two 
heavens."  But  above  these  two,  says  Servetus,  there 
is  a  third  heaven,  a  heaven  of  Divinity,  which  is  also 
called  tlie  heaven  of  lieavens,  and  it  was  into  this 
heaven  that  Paul  tells  us  he  was  caught  up.  This 
heaven  of  light  and  fire  is  tiie  radiance  of  the  Word 

■■'M!.   718,   725.         "  K.  17  6.  "  K.  280,020.      •"  R.  718. 

56 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

(Verbi  fulgor),  the  true  universal  exemplar.^"  And 
in  a  beautiful  passage  he  states,  "  through  Christ 
even  we  have  become  Heaven,  for  when  Christ  makes 
us  new  creatures.  He  makes  new  heavens."  ^^ 

In  Heaven,  moreover,  as  also  in  Hell,  there  are 
many  different  conditions.  Servetus  reproaches  his 
adversaries  for  teaching  that  all  the  just  enjoy  the 
same  degree  of  blessedness,  and  all  the  lost  the  same 
degree  of  damnation,  while  he,  on  the  other  hand, 
could  not  believe  that  those  who  have  betrayed  Christ 
would  receive  no  worse  punishment  than  a  pooi- 
heathen  who  had  not  known  the  Lord.  And  there- 
fore he  held  firmly  to  the  conviction  that  in  the  world 
above  there  are  many  mansions  and  many  different 
degrees  of  light  and  bliss,  even  as  in  the  infernal 
regions  there  are  various  degrees  of  darkness  and 
abysses  beneath  abysses.  But  we  must  always  under- 
stand that  Heaven,  as  well  as  Hell,  has  its  beginning 
in  the  human  heart.^- 

In  the  Preface  to  his  Restitution  of  Christi- 
anity he  states  that  "  the  Kingdom  of  Christ  is  a 
kingdom  of  faith,  a  kingdom  of  the  Gospel,  and  a 
kingdom  of  love.  Without  faith  there  is  no  entrance 
into  the  kingdom  of  Christ,  and  therefore  the  first 
book  of  the  work  treats  of  faith. ""^  But  faith  is 
appreciated  according  to  the  gifts  of  Christ  as  given 
in  the  Gospel,  and  therefore  the  second  book  treats 
of    the    Gospel.^*      And,    finally,    the    Kingdom    of 

»^R.   1.57.        "R.   312.        "R.    3.38.        "  R.   288.   "  R.    314. 

57 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Heaven  is  no  mere  festivity,  no  lazy  dreaming  of 
eternal  rest,  but  it  is  a  kingdom  of  work  and  of  con- 
duct. And  the  conduct  or  walk  through  the  heavenly 
kingdom,  from  step  to  step  and  from  plane  to  plane, 
is  nothing  but  love.  Where  love  is  thus  in  its  own 
right  atmosphere,  there  mere  faith  vanishes,  for 
love  is  Divine.  And  therefore  the  third  book  treats 
of  love."'  ^^ 

The  above  is  but  a  meager  outline  of  his  teach- 
ings concerning  the  spiritual  world.  We  cannot 
enter  at  present  into  further  details,  l)ut  enough 
has  been  given  to  indicate  how  nearly  Heaven  was 
about  to  unfold  its  secrets  to  this  simple,  earnest  and 
perceptive  student  of  the  Word  of  God.  Neverthe- 
less, when  compared  to  the  Eevelation  given  in 
Swedenborg's  Writings,  the  things  of  the  other  life 
that  were  seen  by  Servetus,  were  but  seen  "  as  througli 
a  glass,  darkly." 

4.  FAITH  AND  CHARITY. 

Almost  in  the  very  words  of  Hwedenborg,  Servetus 
condemns  the  reformers  for  their  fundamental 
heresy,  the  doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith  alone. 
Faith,  he  admits,  does  indeed  save  a  man,  but  not 
faith  alone,  especially  not  the  faith  of  the  Lutherans, 
or  of  any  Church  that  has  divided  the  Godhead  into 
three   persons   and    (Jhrist    into   two   natures.      "  To 

"R.  337. 
58 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

believe,"  he  says,  "  is  supposed  to  be  sufficient  for 
salvation;  but  what  folly  to  believe  aught  which 
cannot  be  understood, — which  is  impossible  in  the 
nature  of  things,  and  which  may  even  be  looked  upon 
as  blasphemous.  Can  it  be  that  mere  confusion  of 
the  mind  is  deemed  an  adequate  condition  of 
faith  ?"•■'« 

Faith  is  no  mere  gift  of  God,  but  is  the  same  as 
Confidence  based  upon  knowledge  and  experience.'"''^ 
No  one  can  have  faith  in  that  of  which  he  has  no 
knowledge  whatsoever.^*  Faith  enters  by  means  pf 
knowledge  of  the  truth,  and  is  in  itself  the  door 
through  which  cJiaribj  may  enter  in,  imparting  the 
spirit  wliich  leads  the  way  to  good  works  and  kindles 
the  love.  He  unsparingly  denounces  and  ridicules 
the  Lutherans  and  the  other  reformers  for  their 
doctrine  of  salvation  by  faith  alone,^®  and  for  their 
contempt  of  good  works,  and  he  openly  laughs  at 
their  doctrine  that  good  works  are  the  necessary 
friiits  of  faith,  for  their  faith  necessarily  invites  man 
to  do  no  works  whatever.*"  "  You  must  have 
charity,"  they  say,  "  but  it  will  be  of  no  use  to  you. 
Their  imaginations  make  men  so  lazy  that  they  neglect 
evei-ytliing  and  care  nothing  for  prayers  and  alms- 
giving. If  you  speak  to  them  of  continence,  chastity, 
temperance,  or  the  mortification  of  the  flesh,  they 
mock  at  you  with  contemptuous  laughter."  *^     The 


''R.   288. 

"R.  300. 

*°R.  346. 

"R.  297. 

=»E.  99  a. 
59 

"K.  99  6. 

MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

doctrine  that  good  works  are  the  fruits  of  faith  he 
terms  a  "  magical  fascination  of  the  devil."  "  Faith 
and  Charity  are  brother  and  sister.  The  Scripture 
teaches  that  good  works  are  the  fruits  of  the  Spirit, 
just  as  faith  is  the  fruit  of  the  Spirit,  and  charity 
is   the  fruit   of   the   Spirit,   according  to   Gal.    5 : 

"  To  love  Christ,"  he  exclaims,  "  is  better  than  to 
believe.'^  "  Charity  is  the  greatest  of  all  the  virtues. 
Charity  and  faith  are  inseparable  companions.  The 
judgment  upon  each  one  after  death  is  according  to 
his  works.  Good  works  have  their  own  use  and  re- 
ward, and  even  Jews  and  heathens  have  been  saved 
by  charity  and  good  works,  and  will  receive  the  true 
faith  at  the  day  of  Judgment."  *^  "  Charity  is  our 
perfection  unto  Christ.  Charity  makes  us  more  simi- 
lar to  God,  because  God  is  charity  itself.'*  "  Faith 
is  to  charity  what  Baptism  is  to  the  Holy  Supper."  ** 
"  Those  have  altogether  misunderstood  the  apostle 
Paul,  who  at  this  day  are  blaming  all  good  works, 
when  yet  Paul  himself  teaches  that  not  only  the 
justification  of  the  Law,  but  also  the  justification  of 
nature  is  a  justification  of  work."  ■*^  "  Charity  brings 
efficacy  to  faith  itself."  *^  "  The  Holy  Spirit,  which 
is  eliarity,  is  tlie  life  of  faith  itself."  *''  All  the  books 
of  Servetus  are  teeming  with  teachings  such  as  these. 

"R.  608.  "R.  341.  ""R.  3.')0. 

"R.  312.  "R.  3:52.  ^'R.  -srA. 


60 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

5.  SIN.  FREEDOM.  AND  THE  SACRAMENTS. 

Scrvetus,  as  might  be  expected,  was  a  firm  believer 
ill  the  freedom  of  the  hniiian  will,  and  was  an  equally 
firm  opponent  of  the  doctrine  of  Predestination. 
God,  he  says,  is  freedom  itself,  since  He  is  infinitely 
superior  to  all  external  compelling  influences.  And 
as  God  is  freedom  itself,  so  He  grants  to  man  to 
will  freely  and  to  act  freely,  within  certain  limits.*^ 
"  The  highest  freedom,  however,  lies  in  obedience, 
and  in  it  at  the  same  time  resides  the  loveliest  reward 
of  freedom.'*'^"  Predestination  he  cries  out  against 
as  the  most  horrible  travesty  of  Divine  Justice.  With 
wonderful  keenness  of  vision  he  strikes  at  the  very 
root  of  this  execrable  heresy  by  showing  that  pre- 
destination rests  upon  the  fallacy  that  God  is 
affected  by  the  considerations  of  time,  as  if  God 
would  deliberately  plan  that  one  soul  would  be  saved 
and  another  damned  at  some  future  time,  when 
nevertheless  God  is  above  all  time,  and  all  things 
are  present  with  Him.^** 

On  the  other  hand,  Servetus  did  not,  like  Pelagius. 
deny  the  fallen  and  corrupt  nature  of  man.  "  At  the 
fall,"  he  says,  "  the  serpent  or  Satan  entered  sjib- 
stantially  into  human  nature,'"*^  but  this  affected 
only  his  hereditary  disposition.  "Hereditary  evil 
brings  no  actual  guilt,  for  it  is  evil  and  disease  rather 
than  sin."    Hence  he  threw  overboard  the  horril)le 

"R.  54.         "R.  ;383.        ="  R.  28.3.         ^' Epis.  23  p.G38. 
61 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

doctrine  of  infant  damnation,  for  no  person  is  respon- 
sible for  the  sins  which  he  himself  has  not  com- 
mitted, and  "  no  child  or  youth  can  ever  be  cast  into 
hell  before  he  has  reached  the  age  of  responsibilit}' — 
that  is,  before  his  twentieth  year,  according  to  Xum- 
bers  14 :  39."  °-  "  Between  the  Good  Shepherd  and 
the  little  children  whom  he  pressed  to  His  heart, 
nothing  is  permitted  to  act  as  a  separation.  The 
Savior  will  tolerate  nothing  to  come  between, — no 
intermediary  is  needed,  no  good  works  are  necessary, 
no  guilt,  no  debt,  no  accuser, — not  even  baptism  as 
a  means  of  grace.  The  blessing  which  Christ  gave  to 
the  little  ones  will  transform  them  into  glory  as 
soon  as  they  arise,  awakened  by  Christ."  ^^  We  wish 
we  had  space  for  the  whole  of  his  tender  and  beauti- 
ful chapter  on  the  relation  of  the  Savior  to  the  little 
ones.  It  is  among  the  most  lovely  things  that  have 
ever  been  written,  and  reveals  the  fighting  Michael, — 
tlio  Daniel  come  to  judgment, — in  the  unsuspected 
character  of  a  spiritual  poet,  or,  rather,  an  angel  of 
celestial  tenderness.^* 

With  a  rare  power  of  discrimination,  he  dared  to 
differentiate  between  evil  and  sin.  The  idea  of  sin 
he  confines  to  wicked  actions  alone,  deliberately  com- 
mitted against  a  better  conscience  by  a  man  who  lias 
freely  fallen  by  his  own  voluntary  choice."^"'  This, 
most  especially,  brought  upon  him  the  hatred  of  the 
reformers,  who  one  and   all   confounded  hereditary 

"R.  363.        "R.  368.        "ToLLiN  3:   4.        **  R.  593. 
62 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

evil  with  actual  guilt,  thus  making  the  burden  of 
sin  so  enormous,  so  ovorw helming,  that  no  effort  of 
man,  no  endeavor  to  shun  particular  evils,  would  be 
of  any  avail  for  salvation ;  nothing  but  the  Grace  of 
God,  received  through  faith  alone,  could  sweep  away 
all  evil  and  all  sin,  at  one  instantaneous  stroke, — 
with  those  elected  favorites  who  were  destined  to 
receive  the  gift  of  faith !  A  doctrine  such  as  this, 
Servetus  brands  as  "  perhorrenda." 

Having  rejected  the  insane  dogma  of  infant  dam- 
nation, Servetus  unfortunately  fell  into  the  error 
of  rejecting  the  practice  of  infant  baptism.  Since 
no  infant,  baptized  or  otherwise,  could  be  damned, 
baptism  could  not  be  a  sine  qua  non  for  infant  sal- 
vation. Baptism,  to  him,  was  an  act  of  faith,  an  act 
of  mature  and  rational  judgment  and  choice,  sucli 
as  a  child  could  not  exercise;  and  therefore  Servetus 
would  defer  Baptism  until  the  thirtieth  year,  when, 
following  in  the  footsteps  of  the  Savior,  the  man 
would  be  in  full  exercise  of  rational  judgment.^'' 
This  doctrine  is  the  only  one  that  we  have  been  able 
to  discover  among  the  teachings  of  Servetus  which 
is  contrary  to  the  Doctrine  of  the  New  Jerusalem,  but 
he  must  be  pardoned  for  this  error  as  he  could  not 
possibly  know  that  Baptism,  by  the  Word  of  God, 
by  the  laying  on  of  hands,  and  by  the  surrounding 
sphere  of  the  Church,  effects  an  actual  association 
in  the  spiritual  world,  independent  of  the  volition 

"R.  573-576. 
63 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

of  the  one  who  is  heing  baptized.  This  fact  could 
be  known  only  by  an  actual  new  Divine  Revelation. 
Baptism,  indeed,  is  not  an  essential  of  salvation,  but 
it  is  the  gate  of  entrance  into  the  Lord's  Church  on 
earth,  the  Church  into  which  the  Lord  invites  espe- 
cially the  little  children  to  "  come  unto  Me." 

Otherwise  his  general  doctrine  concerning  the  Sac- 
raments comes  quite  close  to  the  Doctrine  of  the 
^'eAv  Church.  He  calls  Baptism  "  the  bath  of  Regen- 
eration," ^^  teaching  that  it  represents  the  introduc- 
tion into  the  Church  through  faith  and  repentance, 
and  that,  when  these  are  present,  Baptism  has  an 
organic  influence  upon  the  new  birth  in  Christ. 

The  Holy  Supper  he  terms  "the  Supper  of  the 
Soul,"  and  says  that  it  represents  the  life  of  charity 
and  love,  just  as  Baptism  represents  faith.^''**  He 
rejects  with  an  equal  condemnation  all  the  prevailing 
notions  in  regard  to  the  Eucharist, — the  magical 
doctrine  of  Transubstantiation  taught  by  the  Roman 
Catholics,^^  who  pretend  that  the  bread  and  the 
wine,  by  the  mere  blessing  of  the  priest,  change  their 
substance  and  hecome  the  actual  body  and  blood  of 
Christ; — the  stolid  literalism  of  the  Lutherans  who 
insist  that  the  elements  are  the  material  flesh  and 
blood  of  Christ,  in  some  way  or  another,  nobody 
knows  or  cares  how ; — and  the  coldly  historical  view 

^'  R.  484.  "  hocus  pocus  "   in  the  pars 

"'  R.  344,  502.  of  the  common   p<'oplo,  and 

'•The      Roman      formiila        fitly   expresses   the   humlnif» 

"  hoc    est    corpus "    l)ecaine        of    the    priestly    conjurers. 

64 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

of  Zwingli  and  Calvin  who  maintain  that  the  sacred 
elements  merely  represent,  in  a  commemorative  and 
artificial  manner,  the  flesh  and  the  blood,  without 
having  the  least  idea  of  the  spiritual  representation 
of  the  flesh  and  the  blood. 

Neither  was  Servetus  quite  clear  as  to  the  real 
significance  of  the  things  involved,  but  he  comes 
remarkably  close  to  the  truth.  He  teaches  that  "  in 
the  Lord's  Supper  the  true  eating  of  the  body  of 
Christ  is  internal  and  spiritual.  The  internal  eating 
is  demonstrated  by  the  external,  and  the  spiritual  by 
the  corporeal.  .  .  .  The  bread  is  not  only  the 
body  of  Christ,  but  the  body  of  Christ  is  the  true 
bread.  And  by  the  bread  He  makes  Himself  truly 
present  to  us,  and  as  the  true  bread  He  feeds  and 
nourishes  our  internal  man.  .  .  .  It  is  the  spirit 
that  eats,  not  the  flesh  (John  6:35).  The  instruments 
of  the  eating  arc  in  the  heart, — faith  and  charity."  ^^ 

6.  CHRIST  AND  THE  TRINITY. 

That  which  above  all  else  characterizes  and  dis- 
tinguishes the  Theology  of  Servetus  from  the  doc- 
trines of  his  contemporaries,  and  that  in  which  above 
all  else  he  approaches  most  closely  to  the  "  Universal 
Theolog}' "  of  the  New  Church, — is  his  doctrine  con- 
cerning the  Lord  and  the  Trinity  in  Him.  This  has 
been  called  a  "  Christo-centric  "  Theology,  but  Tollin 

•»De    Regen.    L.    III.    p.   501. 
5  65 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

has  more  fittingly  described  it  as  "  Pan-Christism,'"  "^ 
for  Christ,  the  Deus-Homo,  was  to  Servetus  not  only 
the  Centre  but  the  Whole  of  all  Theology  and  all 
Eeligion. 

This  doctrine  of  Christ  as  the  one  and  only  God 
rings  as  clear  in  the  first  work  of  the  Spaniard  as  in 
his  last.  He  was  a  progressive  thinker,  and  many  of 
his  conceptions  underwent  change  and  development 
from  time  to  time,  as  may  be  seen  from  his  successive 
works  and  letters,  but  his  doctrine  concerning  Christ 
remains  the  same  throughout  all  his  writings.  But, 
as  Tollin  observes,  "  his  Christ  was  not  .the  Christ  of 
the  theological  schools ;  it  was  the  Christ  of  the  Bible 
and  of  the  Conscience." 

The  image  of  Christ  stood  out  to  Servetus  in  every 
word,  nay,  every  letter  of  the  Scriptures,  as  also  in 
all  things  great  and  small  of  the  created  Universe. 
"  Nay,"  he  exclaims,  "  the  very  stones  cry  out  unto 
me :  '  There  is  One  God  and  One  Lord,  Jesus  the 
Christ.'  "  ^-  "  For  Him  I  speak.  He  alone  defends 
me.  This  only  Master  I  love.  His  words  ever  pierce 
my  bowels.  ...  In  Christ  alone  God  subsists 
and  is  seen;  there  is  no  other  face  or  person  or 
hypostasis  of  God  except  Christ  alone."  *^  And 
consequently  all  the  prayers, — the  many  beautiful, 
tender  and  touching  prayers  abounding  in  the  works 
of  Servetus, — are  one  and  all  addressed  directly  to 

"Lehbststem,  Vol.  2.  p.  '■•'E.  27  &. 

157.  "'R.  74. 

66 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

his  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  just  as  the  New  Churchraan 
prays  at  this  day,  just  as  the  early  Christians  used 
to  pray,  but  prayed  no  longer  after  the  fourth 
century. 

With  this  intense  love  of  Christ  and  faitli  in  Him 
as  the  only  God,  Servetus  turned  with  an  equally 
intense  hatred  against  that  doctrine  which  had 
destroyed  the  faith  in  Christ  among  Christian?. 
Before  the  true  doctrine  of  the  Lord,  and  the  Trinity 
in  Him,  could  be  restored,  the  old  three-personal 
doctrine  must  be  overthrown  and  exterminated. 
Hence  his  constant  battle-cry:  " Beo  danie,  exter- 
minabimus  " ! 

In  his  attacks  upon  this  citadel  of  the  old  theology, 
he  first  of  all  points  out  its  utterly  unscriptural 
character,  "  From  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the 
Bible,"  he  says,  ''  there  is  not  one  single  letter  sup- 
porting these  imaginations,"  ^*  and  "  whatsoever  is 
said  of  God,  if  it  cannot  be  proved  by  the  Sacred 
Scripture,  is  a  lie."  "^  At  first,  indeed,  he  rejected  as 
unbiblical  not  only  the  term  "  persons,"  but  also  the 
term  "  Trinity,"  but  in  his  last  work,  the  Restitu- 
tion OF  Christianity,  he  accepts  the  term  Trinity 
and  shows  that  this  Trinity  exists  in  the  person  of 
Christ. 

We  quote  the  following  as  showing  how,  like 
Swedenborg,  he  proved  that  the  idea  of  three  Divine 
persons  is  an  idea  of  three  gods: 

"  E.  42  h.  ""  E.  40  6. 

67 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Those  who  maintain  that  there  are  three  substantial 
persons  or  hypostases  in  God,  insinuate  three  Gods,  equal 
by  nature.  For  they  propose  to  us  three  distinct  and 
different  substantial  things,  and  they  insist  that  each 
one  of  these  things,  (or  hypostases,  as  they  call  it),  is 
God.  Hence  necessarily  they  nuike  three  equal  and 
distinct  Gods.  For  when  these  persons  or  hypostases, 
different  as  to  thing  and  number,  are  one  by  one  predicated 
of  God,  it  necessarily  follows  that  there  are  as  many 
subjects  as  there  are  predicates,  and  that  according  to  the 
number  of  the  persons,  so  also  the  number  of  the  gods  are 
multiplied.  And  though  in  too7-ds  they  predicate  one 
such  God  to  us,  yet  in  effect  and  fact  they  represent  to 
us  three  Gods  in  the  understanding.  For  every  acute  and 
sincere  intellect  must  see  that  there  are  three  things  pro- 
posed for  the  worship.  But  how  these  three,  of  whom 
each  one  is  God,  make  one  God  in  number,  no  one  has 
ever  been  able  to  say  or  to  teach.  It  is  therefore  left  in  the 
spirit  and  in  the  understanding  an  insoluble  perplexity 
and  inexplicable  confusion,  that  the  three  are  one,  and 
the  one  is  three.  .  .  .  But  to  set  up  three  Gods  equal 
by  nature,  this  is  the  highest  blasphemy  and  impiet}'.'" 


The  three  imagined  persons  of  the  Trinity  he  char- 
acterizes in  unsparing  terms,  as  "  a  phantasm  of 
demons,  a  three-headed  Cerberus,  an  impossible 
monster,"  *''  "  an  invention  of  Satan  to  alienate  man- 
kind from  a  knowledge  of  the  true  Christ."  ®*  And 
the  beginning  of  this  abomination  which  has  thor- 
oughly corrupted  the  Church,  and  displaced  it  from  its 
time  foundation,  he,  like  Swedenborg,  dates  from  the 
time  when  Arius  introduced  his  metaphysical  Greek 


""Quoted  bv  Aixwoekden,       '"  R.  700. 
p.    131,    from    a    .speech    by       "*  R.  22. 
Servetus   before   his   judges 
in  Geneva. 

68 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

speculations  about  the  consubstautiality  or  non-con- 
substantiality  of  the  Father  and  the  Son  •'*, — the 
time  when  "  the  emperor  became  a  monk,  and  the 
pope  a  king  " ;  in  otlier  words,  from  the  time  of  the 
Council  of  Nicaea,  in  the  year  3'?o, — "  when  the  Son 
of  God  was  snatched  away  from  us.  when  the  Church 
was  banished  from  the  earth,  and  all  abominations 
established  by  laws."  ^^ 

Servetus  realized  to  the  full  the  incalculable 
injuries  done  to  the  Church  by  the  introduction  of 
this  man-made  doctrine.  To  it  he  ascribed  the 
innumerable  heresies  and  sects  which  have  torn  to 
pieces  the  Christian  Church.  To  it  he  ascribed  the 
defeat  of  the  Church  in  the  work  of  converting  Ihe 
Gentiles,  and  also  the  success  of  the  ]\Iohammedan 
Religion  which  not  only  covered  Christianity  with 
well  merited  ridicule,  but  actually  presented  a  better 
idea  of  Christ  than  the  one  prevalent  among  pro- 
fessed Christians.  "  Every  Turk,  Scythian,  and 
Barbarian,"  he  laments,  "  makes  sport  of  your  super- 
stitious battle  of  terms.  Is  it  not  terri])le  that  even 
the  lying  prophet,  Mohammed,  has  a  more  biblical 
view  of  our  Savior,  Jesus  Christ,  than  our  own 
Christian  liars  ?  "  "^  "  Nay,  what  do  I  say,  not  only 
the  Mohammedans  and  the  Jews,  but  the  very  beasts 
of  the  field,  would  despise  us,  could  they  perceive  our 
phantastic  idea  of  God,  for  all  the  works  of  God  are 
]>raising  the  one  Lord,"  "- 

*•  R.  22.         •»  R.  666.         •'  E.  42  h.         '=  E.  4.3  h. 
69 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Servetue,  however,  does  not  reject  the  fact  of  a 
Trinity  in  God ;  it  is  the  trinity  of  persons  that  he  is 
fighting  against,  not  the  trinity  of  Divine  Essentials. 
In  maintaining  the  absolute  Unity  of  God,  he  steers 
clear  alike  of  Patripassianism,  Sabellianism,  Arian- 
ism,  and  Nestorianism.  Patripassianism  he  con- 
demns as  a  heresy,  for  it  taught  that  the  Father 
suffered  together  with  the  Son, — a  manifest  ab- 
surdity, since  the  Divine  cannot  suffer  either  injury 
or  change.  Sabellius  he  condemned  as  teaching  that 
the  three  Divine  persons  were  so  many  different 
manifestations  of  God,  when  nevertheless  the  Father 
has  never  manifested  Himself  as  a  Person,  nor  the 
Holy  Spirit,  but  the  Son  alone.  Arianism  he  con- 
demned most  of  all,  for  it  denied  the  consubstan- 
tiality  of  the  Father  and  the  Son,  and  thus  deprived 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  of  all  genuine  Divinity.  And 
the  Monophysites  are  equally  in  error,  for  they  main- 
tain that  Christ  had  and  has  but  one  nature,  the 
Divine,  thus  denying  that  the  Lord  is  Man  as  well 
as  God. 

Serv'etus, — alone  in  the  entire  history  of  the  Chris- 
tian Church  (before  Swedenborg  appeared),— dis- 
covered an  approximately  true  definition  of  the 
Trinity.  Building  his  Theology  firmly  on  the  Eock 
of  Ages,  and  on  Him  alone,  he  found  that  the  Scrip- 
tures tell  of  no  other  Divine  Person  but  Jesus  Christ. 
He  is  the  only  Manifestation  of  the  Infinite  God,  or 
the  Fatlier,  for  "  No  one  hath  at  any  time  seen  the 

70 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

Father.  The  only  begotten  Son,  He  hath  made  Him 
manifest."  The  Father,  therefore,  is  that  invisible 
Divine,  which  becomes  manifest  in  and  as  the  Lord 
■Jesus  Christ.  And  the  Holy  Spirit  is  nothing  but 
the  Divine  breath  and  regenerating  operation  of  the 
Divine  thus  manifesting  itself  as  Jesus  Christ. 

In  Jesus  Christ,  therefore,  is  the  fulness  of  the 
Godhead  bodily,  as  Paul  teaches;  and  Servetus,  with 
his  usual  keen  perception,  noticed  that  the  Apostles, 
when  baptizing  in  the  name  of  Jesus  Christ  alone, 
actually  fulfilled  the  Lord's  last  injunction  to  baptize 
all  nations  "  in  the  name  of  the  Father,  and  of  the 
Son,  and  of  the  Holy  Spirit " — for  in  Christ  all 
these  are  One.'^^ 

Instead  of  trying  to  bolster  up  the  unbiblical  term 
"  persons  "  by  offering  possible  explanations  of  the 
impossible,  he  frankly  states  that  "  it  were  well  if  all 
distinction  of  persons  in  the  one  God  were  henceforth 
abandoned  and  rooted  out  of  the  minds  of  men."  ''* 
And,  not  contenting  himself  with  mere  negations, 
he  offers  in  the  place  of  the  old  term  and  idea,  the 
idea  and  term  of  dispositions  or  modes,  i.e.,  manners 
of  accommodation,  adaptation,  and  communication, 
of  the  one  infinite  God  in  relation  to  the  created 
universe  and  in  relation  to  His  human  children.  As 
the  infinite  origin  of  all  things,  God  is  called  the 
Father.  As  the  first  substantial  manifestation  of 
this  infinite  Power,  the  substance  by  which  and  out 

"R.  24.  "E.  64. 

71 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

of  which  all  things  were  made  that  were  made, 
God  is  called  the  Word  or  Logos.  As  this  Word 
made  flesh,  for  the  sake  of  redeeming  and  saving 
men.  He  is  called  the  Son  ;  and  as  the  Divine  Opera- 
tion, by  which  this  Redemption  and  salvation  is 
continually  effected  with  the  faithful,  He  is  called 
the  Holy  Spirit." 


7.  THE  FATHER,  THE  INFINITE  ESSE. 

In  his  conception  of  God,  Servetus,  like  Sweden- 
borg,  begins  with  the  thought  of  the  Infinite,  the 
Divine  itself.  "  Before  creation  was,  God  was ;  but 
neither  was  He  Light,  nor  Word,  nor  Spirit,  but 
some  other  ineffable  thing;  these — the  Light,  the 
Word,  the  Spirit, — are  only  dispositions,  modes  or 
expressions  of  the  pre-existent  Deity."  "^  This  Deity 
is  absolutely  One,  not  an  abstract  imit  or  a  bare 
mathematical  point,  but  an  infinite  ocean  of  sub- 
stance which  fashions  all  forms,  and  bears  them 
within  itself.  In  Himself  He  is  altogether  incom- 
prehensible, and  He  can  be  comprehended,  repre- 
sented, and  thought  of  only  in  an  image,  namely,  in 
the  figure  of  Christ  as  the  Person  of  tlie  Word.'^ 
The  name  Jehovah  is  to  be  applied  exclusively  to  this 
One  and  Eternal  God ;  the  other  Divine  names,  such 
as  El,  Adonai,  Elohim,  etc.,  are  sometimes  applied 
also  to  exalted  but  finite  beings,  such  as  the  angels, 

"R.  704.        "Dial.   TI  p.   4.  "  E.  102  6. 

72 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

l)ut  in  an  infinite  dogree  to  Jesus  Christ.'^  "  In  the 
Trinity  the  Father  is  the  whole  substance  and  the 
only  God,  from  which  all  degrees  and  forms  have 
come  forth."  '"  "  God  is  eternal,  One,  and  Indivis- 
ible; in  Himself  He  is  inscrutable,  but  makes  known 
His  Being  in  and  through  creation;  so  that  not  only 
in  every  living  thing,  but  also  in  every  lifeless  thing, 
there  is  an  aspect  of  the  Deity."  ^^  "  In  the  uni- 
versal and  all-forming  essence  of  God  there  are  an 
infinite  number  of  Divine  essentials  and  modes,  the 
architypes  or  forms  and  ideas  of  all  things,  contained 
and  represented  in  an  ineffable  manner  from  all 
eternity."  *^  "  God  Himself  is  the  essence  of  all 
things,  and  all  things  are  in  Him."  *-  "  It  is  God 
who  gives  Esse  or  essential  being  to  every  existing 
thing, — to  inanimate  creation,  to  living  creatures  in 
general,  and  to  man  in  special."  ** 

Being  the  Esse  of  all  things,  God  is  also  the  sub- 
stance of  everything,  and  the  only  substance.  God 
created  the  world  out  of  Himself,  of  His  own  sub- 
stance, and  as  Essence  He  essentiates  all  things. 
All  finite  things  thus  receive  in  a  finite  measure  of 
the  Divine  Essence  and  substance;  but  in  the  body 
and  spirit  of  Jesus  Christ  alone  it  was  received  with- 
out measure.^* 

This  daring  conception  of  God  as  the  only  sub- 
stance naturally  laid  Servetus  open  to  the  charge  of 

"R.  65.  '"Dial.  I:  4.         *"  R.  127.  **  Di.\r..  11. 

•»E.  28  6.        »'R.  129,  161.       "Dial.  II. 
73 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Pantheism.  "  His  idea  of  God,"  says  Prof.  Emerton, 
"  was  of  a  being  so  completely  pervading  all  life 
that  it  was  hardly  to  be  distinguished  from  the  things 
it  so  utterly  filled  and  animated.  The  handiest  word 
to  describe  an  idea  of  this  sort  is  '  pantheism,'  and  in 
fact  the  theology  of  Servetus  has  often  been  thus 
described."  How  unfounded  is  this  charge,  whicli 
has  also  been  brought  against  Swedenborg,  is  evi- 
dent from  the  oft-repeated  statement  of  Servetus 
that  God  nevertheless  is  "  separate,"  i.e.,  distinct 
from  all  created  things.*^  Servetus  here  speaks  of 
the  substance  of  God  as  the  only  substance,  and  of 
the  presence  of  God  as  omnipresent,  but  he  also 
states  that  God  is  above  all  space  and  above  all  time, 
and  he  nowhere  denies  that  the  forms  of  creation  are 
■finite  forms  of  the  Infinite  substance;  being  finite, 
they  cannot  be  confounded  with  the  Infinite.  Calvin, 
of  course,  here  saw  his  opportunity  to  create  an 
unfavorable  impression  of  Servetus.  The  latter,  at 
his  last  trial,  had  affirmed  that  the  substance  of  God 
is  omnipresent  and  contains  all  things,  whereupon 
Calvin  asked  him  if  then,  when  we  step  on  the  side- 
walk, we  trample  God  under  our  feet?  Servetus 
replied  that  the  substance  of  God  is  in  all  things 
as  the  only  substance,  being  present,  therefore,  also 
in  wood  and  stone.  Calvin  then  asked  if  the  devil 
himself  was  of  the  substance  of  God?  At  this  Ser- 
vetus is  said  to  have  smiled,  replying,  "  Can  you 

"Dial.  II.  p.  10. 
74 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

then  doubt  it?  To  me  it  is  a  universal  principle  that 
everything  has  come  into  being  from  the  communica- 
tion of  God,  and  that  nature  is  the  substantial  spirit 
of  God."  ^^  This  conversation  is  reported  by  Calvin 
in  a  letter  to  his  chief  assistant-inquisitor,  Farel. 

8.  THE  LOGOS,  THE  SOUL  OF  CHRIST. 

"  Out  of  Himself  the  invisible  God  at  Creation 
brought  forth  the  visible  world,  as  it  were  out  of 
darkness.  The  Word  stood  forth  (exstitit)  out  of 
the  inner  spirit  of  God.  I  call  it  an  ex-istence,  for 
God  said.  Let  there  be  Light,  and  there  was  Light."  *^ 

This  Word,  or  Logos,  was  not  an  empty  sound  or 
articulation,  but  an  uncreated  and  eternal  Light, 
standing  forth,  not  created, — "  the  eternal  Thought 
of  God,  the  eternal  Reason,  the  ideal  world,  the  archi- 
type  of  all  things  created, — the  Divine  Wisdom  in 
God,  like  a  certain  intelligent  soul  contemplating  all 
things  within  Himself."  And  not  only  was  the  Logos 
thus  the  manifestation  of  God,  but  it  was  God  Him- 
self standing  forth  in  all  His  Divine  fulness,  as  the 
first  expression  in  outward  form  of  the  Divine 
Activity.^^ 

This  creative  Logos,  however,  was  not  a  merely 
mechanical  or  inorganic  power,  for  as  the  primeval 

^  Tbechsel  p.  226.  "  Dial.   I    p.   206 ;    II  p. 

"R.  704.  284;  EpiST.  3  p.  582.  Apol. 

p.  733. 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

Light  or  Word  shone  forth  in  the  beginning  from 
God,  it  inherently  possessed  and  reflected  the  human 
form,^^  for  in  it  was  already  manifested  the  form  of 
the  future  Chnst,  not  ideally  alone,  but  actually  and 
visibly;  and  from  this  original  type  and  modus  of 
Divine  Manifestation  proceed  all  other  modifications 
of  the  Deity.  Nay,  even  before  the  Incarnation,  the 
Logos  actually  was  Christ,  as  to  His  Spirit  and  as 
to  His  Soul,  wanting  only  a  body  of  flesh.®" 

Compare  with  this  teaching  the  statement  of 
Swedenborg  "  that  in  the  I^ord  from  eternity,  who 
is  Jehovah,  before  the  assumption  of  the  Human  in 
the  world,  the  two  prior  degrees  existed  actually,  and 
the  third  degree  in  potency,  such  as  these  degrees 
also  are  with  the  angels ;  but  that  after  His  assump- 
tion of  the  Human  in  the  world.  He  put  on  also 
the  third  or  natural  degree  and  thereby  became  a 
man  like  a  man  in  the  world."  (Divine  Love  and 
Wisdom,  233.) 

"  For,"  continues  Servetus,  "  even  before  the  Incar- 
nation, God  on  all  occasions  ever  acted  in  a  human 
manner,  represented  Himself  to  man  in  the  fonn 
of  a  Man,  spoke  as  a  Man,  and  was  seen  as  a  Man 
by  the  patriarchs, — but  through  the  instrumentality 
of  angels."  "^  "  Christ,  therefore  [as  the  Word 
before  the  Incarnation],  is  the  whole  substantial 
Deity  and  the  primary  uncreated  Light  itself.  He 
Himself  is  Jehovah  anrl  the  beginning  of  all  natural 

""R.  fi90.  *"R.  0J).3.  "R.  691. 

76 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

things."  "^  "  The  soul  of  Christ,  as  the  primeval 
Word,  is  the  architype  of  all  things,  the  representa- 
tive world-soul  (aninia  mundi),"^^  "the  eternal 
ocean  of  ideas."  "*  As  such,  also.  He  was  the  creator 
and  ordainer  of  all  things,  and  all  things,  whether 
heavenly  or  earthly,  l)odily  or  spiritual,  consist  in 
Him.  He  created  the  matters  of  the  elements,  He 
mingled  them  together,  and  He  it  was  who  out  of 
His  own  treasure-house  of  light  endowed  them  sub- 
stantially with  forms  of  light."  ''^  The  world,  he 
concludes,  came  into  being  through  CMirist  as  the 
Logos,  and  solely  in  order  to  admit  of  His  becoming 
a  ^fan  in  the  Flesh,  and  it  has  no  significance  what- 
ever apart  from  Him  who  was  to  appear  in  the 
world  and  reign  over  it  forever. 

It  will  be  seen  from  these  extracts  how  completely 
without  foimdation  is  the  assertion  that  Servetus 
denied  the  eternal  pre-existence  of  Christ.  His  whole 
Theology,  which  has  appeared  so  obscure  and  com- 
plicated to  the  learned  world,  is  on  the  contrary 
very  simple, — nothing  but  the  plain  teaching  in 
John :  "  In  the  beginning  was  the  Word,  and  the 
Word  was  with  God,  and  God  was  the  Word.  He  was 
in  the  beginning  with  God.  All  things  were  made 
by  Him,  and  without  Him  there  was  not  anything 
made  that  was  made.  In  Him  was  Life,  and  the 
Life  was  the  Light  of  man.  .  .  .  And  the  Word 
became  flesh  and  dwelt  among  us,  and  we  saw  His 

•»R.  282.     "'R.  268.     "^  R.  278.     "^  De  Trin.  L.  IV.  p.  15L 

77 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

glory,  the  glory  as  of  the  Only-begotten  of  the 
Father,  full  of  grace  and  of  truth." 

It  was  not  the  idea  of  the  eternal  Christ  that 
Servetus  rejected,  but  the  idea  of  a  Son  born  from 
eternity,  a  second  person  of  the  Deity,  bom  from 
the  first  person,  yet  co-eternal  with  him !  "  The 
expression  *  Son ',"  he  says,  "  does  not  properly  stand 
for  the  '  Word,'  but  always  for  a  '  Man  ',"  »«  "  Not 
a  single  passage  of  the  whole  Sacred  Scripture  can 
be  brought  forward,  in  which  the  term  '  Son '  is 
used  in  any  other  sense  than  that  of  a  Man  who  is  a 
Son."  "  When,  in  the  Old  Testament,  a  Son  of  God 
is  spoken  of,  it  is  always  a  future  Son  of  God  that 
is  predicted,  a  Son  that  was  to  be  born  in  time,  and 
in  this  world.  The  Logos  itself,  the  Soul  of  Christ, 
is  not  the  Son  of  God,  but  is  God  Himself  in  His 
first  manifestation;  but  this  Logos  actually  became 
the  Son  of  God  when  it  appeared  on  earth  as  a  man 
born  of  a  woman. 

This  doctrine,  so  eminently  biblical  and  rational, 
was  the  crux  of  the  offense  of  Servetus  against  the 
prevailing  Theology  of  his  day,  for  it  destroyed  at 
a  blow  the  notion  of  a  prearranged  Atonement  by  an 
eternal  Son  to  an  eternal  Father.  And  it  was  chiefly 
because  of  this  doctrine  that  Servetus  was  accused, 
condemned,  and  executed.  It  was  this  doctrine, 
finally,  that  Servetus  most  stoutly  defended  through- 
out his  trial,  and  which  he  asserted  with  his  last 

••R.  90.  ""R.  689. 

78 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

expiring  breath  amidst  the  flames,  in  his  cry: 
"  Jesus,  thou  Son  of  the  eternal  God,  have  mercy 
upon  me." 

9.  THE  INCARNATION. 

It  was  this  "  Logos,'"  then,  which,  as  Divine  seed, 
descended  into  Mary's  womb  and  there  covered  itself 
with  a  body  of  human  flesh.  Like  Swedenborg,  Ser- 
vetus  looks  upon  the  virgin  conception  as,  indeed, 
a  Miracle,  but  not  as  anything  contrary  to  the  natural 
laws  of  order.  "  With  Christ,  as  with  evei7  man," 
he  says,  "  the  soul  was  from  the  father,  and  the 
body  from  the  mother  alone."  ®*  "  The  Logos  was 
the  seed  from  which  Christ  was  conceived.  Indeed, 
eveiy  other  seed  has  its  potency  from  the  seed  of 
the  Word."»«  "In  the  soul  itself  lies  hidden  the 
formative  idea  of  the  body,"  as  the  future  plant  lies 
hidden  in  the  vegetable  seed.""  "  As  in  every  con- 
ception, the  formative  seed  or  plasmic  potency  creates 
for  itself  a  material  body  in  the  mother's  womb, 
even  so  the  Word  of  God,  as  formative  faculty,  fonned 
a  body  for  itself  in  Mary's  womb."  "^  "  Christ,  lilce 
every  other  man,  took  from  the  maternal  bosom  of 
Mary  the  matter  of  his  flesh.  The  earthly  matter 
was  from  the  mother  alone." "-  "  But,  different 
from  other  men,  in  the  conception  of  Christ  it  was 

•'R.  254,  Trechsel  131.  "R.  251.         '"R.  679. 

""R.  216.         "«R.  250. 
79 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

the  Word  of  God  alone,  as  containing  in  itself  all 
seminal  power  substantially,  that  made  the  natural 
dew  for  the  conception  of  Christ  in  the  womb  of  the 
virgin."  ^"^  "  The  Divine  Logos  took  the  place  of 
the  paternal  seed,  uniting  itself  livingly  with  the 
maternal  blood  in  the  embryo,"  ^"*  "  mingling  itself 
Avith  the  blood  of  the  virgin,  and  thus  transforming 
the  human  matter  into  God."  ^"^ 

Thus,  "  by  the  Incarnation,  God  and  man  were 
henceforth  One,  in  one  flesh."  "«  "  The  man  Christ 
was  so  penetrated  by  the  Deity  that  He  became  God 
in  his  flesh  and  blood,  in  his  soul,  body  and  spirit.  He 
was  such  while  in  the  embryo,  and  continued  to  bear 
the  substantial  form  of  God  even  when  in  the  grave. 
He  himself  is  the  Word  and  W^isdom  of  God,  and 
this  very  light  of  the  face  of  Christ  is  to  us  the  intel- 
lectual light  and  the  idea  of  all  things.  He  is  the 
speech  of  God  visible  and  audible  at  once  to  the 
sense  and  to  the  understanding."  ^"^  "  As,  therefore, 
the  Father  is  true  God,  so  hath  He  given  His  true 
Godhead  to  His  only  Son  in  a  unique  manner,  and 
has  caused  the  8on  to  be  irwo.  God."  ^^^  "  When  God 
breathed  into  Christ  His  own  soul,  then  at  the  same 
time  He  breathed  into  Him  the  whole  fulness  of 
God  witliout  measure."  ^"^  "  Christ,  therefore,  is 
not   only   consubstantial   with    the   Father,   but    He 

"«R.  260.  '°*R.  267. 

"^De    Trin.  Lib.     V,    p.  '"' De  Trin.  Lib.  V.  138. 

•i.'-iO.  ""R.   16. 

"«R.  268.  '°'R.  231. 

80 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

alone  is  the  whole  substance  of  God."  ""  "  Christ 
is  God  by  natural  birth,  naturally  born  of  the  sub- 
stance of  God.  The  whole  Deity  of  the  Father,  the 
worship  of  God,  and  the  aspect  of  God,  exist  in 
Christ,  the  true  God."  '''  "  The  soul  of  Christ  is 
God ;  the  body  of  Christ  is  God ;  the  spirit  of  Christ 
is  God;  and  therefore  the  whole  of  Christ  is  God."  ^" 

10.  THE  GLORIFICATION. 

While  the  Divine,  as  to  its  whole  substance,  dwelt 
in  the  human  body  of  Christ  from  its  very  concep- 
tion, it  did  not,  however,  at  once  take  possession  of 
the  whole  of  that  body,  but  the  Glorification  of  the 
human  body  was  a  gradual  process,^^^  For  "  the 
body  from  the  mother  included  corruptible  elements, 
which  were  not  fully  laid  aside  until  the  resurrec- 
tion." The  resurrection  of  Christ  was  regarded  by 
Servetus  as  the  climax  of  the  Glorification,  even  as 
he  regarded  the  Incarnation  of  the  Word  as  the 
climax  of  the  self-finitization  of  God.^^* 

As  to  the  actual  process  of  the  Glorification,  Ser- 
vetus, indeed,  possessed  only  very  general  ideas,  and 
we  have  found  but  little  in  his  works  in  regard  to 
the  Lord's  temptations,  arising  from  the  evil  inclina- 
tions of  the  maternal  heredity,  or  in  regard  to  the 

"»  E.  107  6.  "'  De  Trin.  Lib.  V.  182  : 

»"  R.  16.  Dial.  II.  267. 

'>^R.  231.  '"R.  279. 

6  81 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

combats  and  victories  of  the  Acquired  Human,  or 
how  the  Lord  first  made  His  human  the  Divine  Truth 
itself,  and  then  united  to  it  the  Divine  Good  itself. 
He  speaks,  however,  of  Christ  first  becoming  Elohim 
and  afterwards  Jehovah,  which  may  indicate  a  certain 
faint  conception  of  the  two  universal  stages  of  the 
Glorification,  corresponding  to  the  two  stages  of 
Eeformation  and  Eegeneration  with  finite  man.  Ser- 
vetus  makes  constant  use  of  the  term  ''  Glorification," 
and  describes  it  as  an  interpenetration  of  the  Word 
into  the  flesh,  and  as  a  transformation  of  the  flesh 
into  Divine  Substance.^^^  "  The  Word,  indeed, 
became  flesh,  and  yet  remained  the  Word.  By  the 
Incarnation  the  Word  was  not  annihilated  as  sueh^ 
nor  was  it  changed  into  flesh  by  a  transformation 
of  substance;  but  it  was  the  matter  of  the  flesh  that 
was  transformed  by  the  Word,  so  that  the  combined 
result  was  one  Flesh- Word  (caro-verhum) ."  ^^'^ 
"Thus  the  substance  of  the  Word  participated  in 
the  transformed  flesh,  so  that  both  became  one  Hypos- 
tasis, one  substance,  one  body,  and  one  real  Man. 
One  throughout  is  the  man  Jesus  Christ,  containing 
in  Himself  the  Divine  and  the  human  nature."  "^ 
"  At  the  resurrection  Clirist  had  acquired  to  Himself 
all  that  which  before  belonged  to  the  Father  alone: 
Divine  Nature,  Divine  Substance,  even  as  to  His 
body,  the  same  eternity,  Jehovali-naturc,  the  power 
of  the  Creator  Himself."  "®     Servetus,  therefore,  in 

""Dial.  11.  p.  256         "HI.  207.         '"II.  2U7.         ""11.  370. 

82 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

his  doctrine  concerning  the  Lord,  starts  out  with  the 
confession:  "Jesus  is  the  Christ,"  and  he  ends  with 
the  adoring  acknowledgment :  "  Jesus  is  the 
Almighty  Creator,  God,  the  true  Jehovah."  ^^® 

In  consequence  of  this  acknowledgment  Scrvetus 
utterly  denied  the  absurd  Nicaean  figment  about  two 
separate  natures  in  the  glorified  Christ, — one  human,' 
and  the  other  Divine, — forever  distinct  and  hetero- 
geneous, and  united  only  by  a  so-called  "hypostatic 
union."  On  the  contrar}-,  "  Christ  consists  not  of 
two  natures,  but  He  partakes  of  both  natures,  and  as 
to  both  He  is  consubstantial  with  God."  ^-°  "  In  the 
body  of  Christ  tlic  Divine  and  the  Human  were  so 
inseparably  and  internally  mingled,  that  even  the 
animal  nature  of  the  body  partook  of  the  Divine 
substance."  ^-^  "  In  Christ  the  nature  of  God  and 
the  nature  of  man  remain  in  one  substance."  ^^^ 
"  One  man  is  Jesus  Christ,  containing  in  Himself 
Divine  and  human  nature."  ^^"  And,  "  even  as  the 
body  of  Christ,  so  also  is  His  soul  at  the  same  time 
Human  and  Divine  in  inseparable  unity."  ^-* 

Servetus  even  went  so  far  as  to  assert  that  "  Christ, 
by  the  Eesurrection,  was  glorified  into  even  greater 
glory  than  the  glory  of  the  Word  before  the  Incar- 
nation," and  he  based  this  doctrine  upon  the  indis- 
putable fact  that  the  Gifts  which  proceed  from  the 
Risen  One  are  greater  than  those  which  proceeded 

>"R.  268.  '''Ibid. 

""Dial.   II.   p.   2G9.  "'R.  267. 

»=*/?>td.  256.  "=*DiAT..  II.  p.  2C1. 

83 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

from  the  Word  not  yet  made  flesh. ^^^  These  Gifts 
were  the  Redemption  of  mankind,  the  aspect  of  a 
visible  Human  God,  the  renewal  of  the  universal 
Macrocosm,  and  the  regeneration  of  man — "  accord- 
ing to  the  pattern  of  the  Glorification  of  Christ " — 
by  the  communication  of  the  Holy  Spirit, — a  Spirit 
which  "was  not  yet"  before  Jesus  was  glorified. 

"  The  "  renewal  of  the  Cosmos  "  was  a  daring  but 
magnificent  conception  quite  peculiar  to  Servetus. 
Through  the  fall  of  mankind,  not  only  was  human 
nature  defiled,  but  at  the  same  time  the  whole  of 
the  material  universe.  With  the  entrance  of  Sin 
into  the  world  the  very  elements  became  injurious. 
Heat  as  well  as  cold  began  to  be  harmful  to  man.  A 
certain  defilement  of  the  elementary  fire  took  place 
tlirough  the  devil,^-^  and  the  devil  defiled  even  the 
air  and  the  water.  If  Adam  had  not  sinned,  there 
would  have  been  no  stormy  clo^^ds  and  terrifying 
lightning,  but  God  would  have  continued  to  moisten 
tlie  earth  by  tlie  sim])le  dew  of  heaven  as  in  Para- 
dise.'^^  With  powerful  imagery  Servetus  describes 
the  glory  of  nature  as  originally  created  by  God,  and 
the  terrible  change  introduced  into  the  universe  by 
the  deliberate  act  of  nian.'-^  But  through  tiie  Glori- 
fication of  Jesns,  and  on  the  day  of  the  Resurrection, 
not  only  Heaven  but  the  earth  and  the  whole  world 
were  made  new.  N^ot  only  was  a  new  s]uritual  king- 
dom  introduced,  but  a  new  creation  of  the  world 

•^'R.  279.  '-«R.  390.  '=' R.  391.  '-' TOLLIN  2:   196. 

84 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

took  place  through  and  in  Christ, — in  short,  evcrij 
thing  was  made  new  through  a  new  universal  Cove- 
nant,^^®  so  that  the  whole  universe  was  born  again 
through  Christ."" 

11.  THE  HOLY  SPIRIT. 

Since  there  is  not  in  the  Godhead  any  tri-personal 
Trinity,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  not  a  separate  Divine 
Person  or  Being  per  se,  proceeding  either  from  the 
Father  through  the  Son  (according  to  the  Greek 
Church),  or  from  the  Father  and  the  Son  (accord- 
ing to  the  Roman  Catholic  Creed).  Xor  is  the 
Spirit  any  supposed  metaphysical  inter-relation 
between  the  Father  and  the  Son  or  an  "  immanent 
operation  "  within  the  essence  of  God,^^^  but  it  is 
simply  a  Divine  Disposition  or  Modus,  accommodated 
on  the  one  hand  to  the  created  universe,  and  on  the 
other  hand  to  the  spirit  of  angel  and  of  man."^ 

From  the  outset  Servetus  draws  a  clear-cut  distinc- 
tion between  the  Spirit  of  God  and  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  Spirit  is  called  the  Spirit  of  God  in  a  universal 
sense,  and  when  it  operates  externally,  but  it  is  called 
the  Holy  Spirit  in  a  special  sense,  and  when  it  is 
active  internally  in  enlightening  and  sanctifying  the 
spirit  of  man.^ '•'  In  other  words,  "  the  essence  of 
God,  when  it  manifests  itself  to  the  world,  is  called 

'»R.  .'"K)2.     TOLT.IN  2.  196.  "'E.  62  ft.  »"  R.  70.1. 

'»R.  295.  '^E.  85a. 

85 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

the  'Word";  when  it  is  communicated  to  the  world, 
it  is  called  the  '  Spirit.'  "  ^^* 

As  to  the  former,  the  Spirit  of  God,  Servetus 
teaches  that  '"it  is  the  universal  agent;  it  is  in  the 
air  we  breathe  and  is  the  very  breath  of  life ;  it  moves 
the  heavenly  bodies,  sends  out  the  winds  from  their 
quarters,  takes  up  and  stores  the  water  in  the  clouds, 
and  pours  it  out  as  rain  to  fertilize  the  earth."  ^-'^ 
"  It  is  the  presence  and  power  of  God  projected  into 
creation,  animating  and  actuating  all  that  is  therein, 
man  more  especially  than  aught  else."  ^"®  "  As  there 
can  be  no  speaking  without  the  sending  forth  of 
breath,  so  also  the  Spirit  of  God  is  the  breath  of  God, 
proceeding  from  Him  when  He  sends  forth  His 
Word."  ^"^  "  As  He  has  created  all  things  through 
His  Word,  so  He  has  ordained,  vivified,  and  energized 
all  things  througli  His  Spirit,""  "^  "  the  spirit  of  life, 
which,  proceeding  from  the  Logos,  fills  all  creation 
as  the  world-soul."  ^'^  "  As  nothing  takes  place 
without  the  Word  of  God,  so  also  tliere  is  not  a  plant 
or  stone  possessing  the  least  virtue  or  quality  without 
this  Spirit."  "°  "  In  the  very  substance  of  the  wind 
God  Himself  is  operating,  so  that  in  a  sense  we  can 
touch  Him  with  our  hands,  and  without  His  Spirit 
the  universe  would  be  nothing  but  a  mass  of  dead 
matter."  ^*^     "Man  becomes  a  livin>;-  and  iininortal 


"*R. 

163. 

"'E.  68  a. 

140  J,^ 

.  66  fl. 

"»R. 

192. 

'^Ibid. 

"'  K. 

.  60  6, 

in«  "p 

57  h. 

"'"Dial.   II.   i 
SO 

).   268. 

HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

being  when  he  first  begins  to  breathe  at  birth,  because 
the  atmosphere  is  the  Spirit  of  God."  ^'*-  "  And  this 
Spirit  is  not  only  from  God,  but  it  is  God  Himself 
in  all  His  fulness,  operating  immediately  in  the 
world,  and  everything  is  full  of  His  Spirit."  ^*-' 

As  to  the  Holy  Spirit,  on  the  other  hand,  Ser- 
vetus  observes  that  this  term  is  used  very  seldom  in 
the  Old  Testament,  but  very  frequently  in  the  New, 
and  this  was  because  the  Jews  thought  nothing  of 
internal  sanctification,  but  only  of  external  purifica- 
tions.^** The  Holy  Spirit,  indeed,  appeared  even 
before  the  birth  of  the  Ijord,  but  always  then  in  the 
form  and  shape  of  an  angel  speaking  and  acting  in 
the  name  of  God.^*^  But,  though  appearing  through 
the  angel,  the  Holy  Si)irit  was  by  no  means  the  angel 
himself.^*^  "  The  angel  himself  was  not  the  Holy 
Spirit,  but  was  only  the  servitor  for  the  ministry  of 
the  Spirit."  "^ 

But  "the  first  complete  exhibition  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  was  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  in  whom, 
together  with  tlie  Logos,  it  assumed  human  nature, 
and  thus,  united  with  the  natural  breath  of  life,  it 
formed  the  Soul  of  Christ."  ^**  This  human  Spirit 
of  Christ  is  the  true  and  complete  "  Hypostasis  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  and  is  communicated  solely  through 
the  breath  of  Christ."  "»     "  Thus,  as  the  AVord  of 


"=DiAL.  II.  p.  -inn.     ""R.  27.  "'De  Tri.\.   182. 

'"E.  mi).  ""K.  85a.         ''»R.  190. 

"•E.  65  b.  "'R.  184. 

87 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

God  was  made  Man,  so  the  Spirit  of  God  became  the 
Spirit  of  a  Man,  hypostatically  and  substantially,^'" 
and  having  become  human  through  Christ,  it  can  be 
communicated  by  Christ  to  those  who  believe  in  Him 
in  the  Holy  Supper  and  through  the  bath  of  Regen- 
eration." ^^^  And  "  our  own  human  spirit,  having 
become  inter-penetrated  by  the  Spirit  of  Christ,  then 
becomes  as  it  were  a  new  holy  spirit.  It  is  this  inter- 
penetration  of  the  glorified  Spirit  of  Christ  that  is 
the  real  cause  and  security  for  our  own  resurrection 
into  glory.  In  short,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  the  Divine 
motion  or  agitation  in  the  human  soul,  and  beside 
this  there  cannot  properly  be  said  to  be  any  Holy 
Spirit."  1^2 

12.  THE  MISSION  OF  SERVETUS. 

Without  attempting  to  dogmatize  upon  the  subject, 
we  may  be  pennitted  to  offer  some  suggestions  as  to 
the  meaning  of  the  apparently  mysterious  mission  of 
Servetus  to  the  Christian  world.  To  a  student  of 
Swedenborg's  works,  it  is  manifest  that  Servetus 
came  as  near  to  the  Doctrine  of  genuine  truth  as 
could  be  possible  to  any  man,  short  of  an  immediate 
Divine  Revelation.  That  he  enjoyed  an  unusual 
light,  or  the  inspiration  of  a  unique  perception  when 
reading  the  Word,  seems  self-evident.  To  us  he 
bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  Swedenborg  during 
the  latter's  preparatory  career.    Both  were  laymen, — 

""Dial.  II.  p.  2(57.         "' E.  85  a.         "''Ibid.    116. 

88 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

spiritual  philosophers  arising  out  of  the  "common 
herd  of  the  laity/'  to  reprove  the  priesthood  for  its 
sins.  Both  were  devout  and  simple  Christians,  lovers 
of  Christ  and  believers  in  the  Word.  Both,  also,  were 
great  scientists,  founding  their  Theology  upon  the 
exact  sciences.  Both  were  alone  in  this  world,  with- 
out the  joys  of  wife  and  family.  Both  were  ignored 
or  misunderstood,  hated  by  Catholics  and  Protestants 
alike.  Both  were  ages  in  advance  of  their  own  times, 
and  both  looked  to  future  times  and  future  genera- 
tions for  appreciation  of  their  doctrines. 

Here,  however,  the  analogy  ceases.  The  ends  and 
purposes  of  Swedenborg's  mission  are  well  known, 
but  those  of  Servetus  still  remain  within  the  realms 
of  hypothesis.  What  is  the  meaning  of  his  appear- 
ance and  his  work  ?  Why  was  this  unique  phenome- 
non permitted  to  appear  with  the  genuine  truth  of 
the  Word,  only  to  disappear  again,  almost  without 
leaving  a  trace  in  the  sands  of  time?  Scarcely  had 
he  opened  his  mouth  before  he  was  howled  down  by 
the  enraged  mob  of  theologians,  and  when  again  he 
lifted  up  his  voice,  it  was  stifled  by  the  smoke  of  the 
heretics'  pyre.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  copies, 
all  his  books  were  destroyed,  and  for  ages, — we  might 
say,  almost  until  our  own  days, — he  has  had  scarcely 
a  single  sympathetic  and  intelligent  reader.  Appar- 
ently he  has  exercised  no  influence  whatever  upon 
the  development  of  theological  thought  in  the  Chris- 
tian Church.     Tollin,  indeed,  asserts  that  the  doc- 

89 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

trines  of  Servetus  were  widely  spread  in  Holland,  and 
that  they  exercised  a  strong  influence  upon  Descartes, 
whose  system,  he  says,  bears  a  strong  resemblance 
to  that  of  Servetus,^^^  but  no  evidence  is  produced 
to  support  this  assertion. 

Surely  he  was  "  the  voice  of  one  crying  in  the 
wilderness  "  !  And  this  thought  suggests  something 
of  a  solution  of  the  problem.  In  some  way,  unknown 
to  us  at  present,  he  was  undoubtedly  a  John  the 
Baptist  preparing  the  way  for  the  Lord  in  His 
Second  Coming.  John  represents  the  letter  of  the 
Word  preparing  the  way  for  the  Word  Incarnate. 
And  Michael  Servetus  undoubtedly  represents  the 
genuine  truth  of  the  literal  sense,  for  this  is  what 
he  taught.  Like  John  he  saw  the  Lord  coming.  He 
recognized  the  existence  of  the  Internal  Sense,  but 
was  not  himself  able  to  open  tlie  shoe-latches  of  that 
Sense.  He  appears  to  us  like  an  angel  sent  from 
Heaven  to  preacli  Bepentancc  to  the  Church  of  the 
Reformers,  to  warn  theui  and  guide  them  into  the 
right  path,  where  they  might  be  prepared  to  wel- 
come and  receive  the  Lord  in  His  soon  approaching 
Coming.  But  the  warning  was  unheeded;  the  mes- 
senger, like  John,  was  done  to  death,  and  the  Lord 
Himself,  when  He  came,  was  rejected  with  scorn  and 
hatred. 

John,  however,  was  permitted  to  have  direct  con- 
tact with  Jesus,  but  Servetus  does  not  appear  to  have 

"*  Lehrsystem.  vol.   .3   p.  .'56. 
90 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

had  any  direct  influeiico  upon  the  Revelation  given 
to  tlie  New  Church.  Swedenborg  himself  does  not 
anywhere  mention  Servetus,  and  we  may  assert  with 
absolute  certainty  that  he  had  never  read  any  of  the 
works  of  the  Spaniard,  for  the  original  editions  had 
l)een  destroyed  with  the  exception  of  two  or  throe 
copies  of  each,  and  these  were  preserved  in  libraries 
which  Swedenborg  never  visited  during  the  forma- 
tive period  of  his  life.  Moreover,  they  have  never 
been  translated  into  any  living  tongue,  and  the 
reprints  of  the  originals  were  not  published  until 
many  years  after  Swedenborg's  death.  Finally, 
Swedenborg  himself  stated  expressly  that  he  was 
never  permitted,  by  the  guiding  hand  of  Providence, 
to  read  works  of  systematic  Theology.  His  inter- 
ests, during  the  greater  part  of  his  preparatory 
career,  lay  in  other  fields, — in  Mechanics,  Geometry, 
Chemistry,  Geology,  Mineralog}^,  Cosmology,  and 
Psycholog}'.  But  the  philosophico-theological  system 
which  appears  first  in  Swedenborg's  work  On  the 
Infinite  (1734),  and  afterwards  in  his  physiological 
works,  had  been  conceived  as  to  its  essential  outlines 
in  his  earlier  years,  and  was  based  not  only  upon  the 
exact  sciences,  but  most  especially  upon  the  hearing 
and  reading  of  the  Word  in  his  childhood.  The 
astonishing  similarity  between  the  system  of  Servetus 
and  Swedenborg's  earlier  system  is  explicable,  there- 
fore, only  by  the  fact  that  both  started  from  the  same 
premises  and  arrived  at  the  same  general  conclusions. 

91 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

This  earlier  philosophico-theological  system  of 
Swedenlx)rg  was  the  matrix  into  which  afterwards 
the  jewel  of  the  Heavenly  Doctrine  of  the  New  Jeru- 
salem could  descend  by  an  immediate  Divin." 
Eevelation. 

"  Among  them  that  are  born  of  women  there  hath 
not  risen  one  greater  than  John  the  Baptist;  yet  he 
that  is  least  in  the  kingdom  of  Heaven  is  greater 
than  he''  (Matth.  11:11).  And  so  also  may  we 
say,  in  all  reverence,  that  among  all  the  teachers  of 
the  Christian  Church, — ancient,  medieval,  and 
modern, — there  has  not  risen  one  greater  in  the  per- 
ception of  truth  than  Michael  Servetus.  Neverthe- 
less, the  least  of  the  teachings  in  the  Doctrine  of 
the  New  Jerusalem  bears  a  Divine  impress  and  ful- 
ness, a  Divine  Authority  of  self-evidencing  light, 
that  is  infinitely  greater  than  the  correct  but  more 
or  less  hypothetical  conclusions  drawn  by  Servetus 
from  the  letter  of  the  Word. 

While  freely  admitting  this  incontrovertible  fact, 
we  cannot  deny  that  the  human  theology  of  Servetus 
still  remains  cousin-german  to  the  Divine  Theolog}' 
of  the  New  Church,  and  in  some  way  the  former 
must  have  served  to  prepare  the  way  for  the  latter. 
May  it  not  be  that  the  Lord  opened  to  Servetus  the 
genuine  truths  of  the  literal  sense  of  the  Word  in 
order  to  prepare  some  one  on  the  earth  for  future 
leadership  in  tbat  battle  of  tbe  Armageddon  which 
was  soon  to  take  place  in  the  spiritual  world?     Ser- 

92 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

vetus  himself  suggests  something  like  this,  hoping  to 
become,  not  the  leader,  indeed,  but  one  of  the  earliest 
champions  in  that  battle,  and  he  almost  playfull}'^ 
alludes  to  his  own  name, — Michael — as  significant  of 
his  mission.  Wo  must  quote  here  from  his  letter 
(to  Abel  Pepin),  written  six  A'cars  before  his  death: 

Bcliold,  tliereforo,  liow  j'our  Gospel  is  confoundod 
by  the  Law!  Your  Gospel  is  without  one  God,  without 
true  faith,  without  oood  works.  Instead  of  the  one  God 
ye  have  a  three-headed  Cerl)erus;  instead  of  true  faith 
ye  have  a  fatal  dream ;  and  good  works  ye  call  empty 
pictures.  The  faitli  in  Christ  is  with  you  a  mere  pretense. 
eflTeeting  nothing.  'Slan  is  to  you  a  mere  stock,  and  God 
is  to  you  a  chimera  of  the  unfree  will,  {servi  arbiirii 
chimoBra).  Regeneration  bj'  the  heavenly  water  ye  do 
not  acknowledge,  but  hold  it  as  a  fable.  The  kingdom 
of  the  heavens  ye  have  closed  before  men  as  an  iraaginar,v 
thing  to  be  shut  off  from  us.  Woe  unto  you,  woe.  woe ! 
By  this  third  letter  1  have  been  willing  to  warn  you  to 
think  better,  but  I  shall  warn  no  longer.  It  has  offended 
you.  perhaps,  that  I  am  mingling  myself  into  this  battle 
of  Michael,  and  that  I  desire  to  mingle  you  into  it  as 
well.  But  ponder  diligently  upon  that  passage  and  you 
will  see  that  it  is  men  who  will  fight  there,  exposing 
their  souls  to  death  for  the  blood  and  testimony  of  .Tesus 
Christ.  Do  you  not  see  that  it  is  treated  there  of  the 
Church  of  Christ,  now  fled  from  tlie  earth  for  so  many 
years?  .  .  .  Therefore  the  battle  will  follow,  and  the 
time  is  at  hand,  as  He  saitli.  .  .  .  That  I  am  about 
to  die  for  this  cause,  I  know  for  certain;  but  I  do  not 
lose  courage  on  this  account,  in  order  that  I  may  become 
a  disciple  like  unto  his  Ma,ster.  This  I  grieve  about, 
that  ye  will  not  permit  me  to  amend  certain  passages  in 
my  writings  which  are  in  Calvin's  hands.  Farewell, 
and  do   not  expect  any  further  letters   from   me. 

T  shall  stand  upon  my  guard,  1  sluill  meditate,  and 
shall  see  what  will  be  said. 

For  He  will  come,  He  will  certainly  come,  and  will 
not  tarr,y. 

93 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 

In  many  other  places  Servetus  expresses  more 
definitely  his  expectation  of  the  Last  Judgment,  the 
Second  Coming  of  the  Lord,  and  a  New  and  crown- 
ing Church.  "  Even  now,"  he  says,  "  heaven  and 
earth  are  being  moved  against  the  Dragon  and  Anti- 
christ; already  a  just  faith  in  Christ  is  beginning 
to  be  understood,  and  the  worthy  Lamb  is  beginning 
to  open  the  Book  that  has  been  closed  by  so  many 
seals."  ^^^  As  to  himself,  Servetus  ardently  hoped 
to  be  allowed  a  place  in  tlie  army  of  Michael  as  one 
of  the  earliest  champions  in  that  holy  battle,  even 
though  he  fully  expected  to  be  done  to  death  on  the 
field.^^^  "  By  this  combat  the  genuine  Church  of  the 
Lord,  which  exists  now  invisible  in  Heaven,  will 
descend  to  the  earth  and  become  visible.  But  it  will 
not  be  established  by  worldly  weapons,  nor  will  evil 
men  be  prevented  from  mixing  themselves  into  it; 
such  are  an  inevitable  part  of  the  external  Church, 
and  are  useful  and  necessary  for  the  purification  of 
the  good.  Nevertheless,  the  presence  of  the  evil,  and 
the  resulting  sufferings  and  persecutions,  will  not 
be  able  to  prevent  the  heavenly  joy  of  the  true  mem- 
bers of  this  new  and  celestial  Church."  ^^^  There 
would,  he  prophesies,  be  a  twofold  battle, — one  in 
Heaven,  where  the  arcb  angel  Michael,  with  his  hosts 
of  angels,  would  overthrow  the  guardian  spirits  of 
the  papal  kingdom  of  Antichrist.  The  other  battle 
would  take  ])laco  on  the  earth,  among  tlie  members 

'"Apol.  718-720.  '•■■'Ei'isT.  20,  p.  028  "^  Ibid. 

94 


HIS  LIFE  AND  TEACHINGS 

of  that  new  Church,  where  the  evil  would  be  assisted 
by  the  kingdom  of  Antichrist,  while  the  good  would 
be  assisted  from  above  by  the  Saints,  "  and  then 
there  will  be  a  new  sending  forth  of  the  Paraclete 
who  will  give  a  new  consolation  after  the  new 
desolation.-'  ^" 

We  do  not  know  for  certain,  of  course,  but  we 
may  at  least  be  permitted  to  surmise  that  the  mission 
for  which  Michael  Servetus  was  being  prepared  dur- 
ing his  brief  and  suffering  life  in  this  world,  was  the 
office  of  teaching  the  genuine  truths  of  the  Word  to 
the  simple  souls  "  under  the  altar "  in  the  other 
world,  who  were  to  be  liberated  at  the  Last  Judgment 
from  tlie  dominion  of  the  "  imaginary  heavens  "  of 
the  Catliolic  and  Protestant  Churches.  This  Last 
Judgment,  which  was  effected  in  the  spiritual  world 
in  the  year  1757,  was  not  a  sudden  event,  for  nothing 
whatever,  great  or  small,  is  effected  without  previous 

PRErARATION. 

"'  Epist.  20:628.    Sign.  Antichrist  30.    R.  716. 


MICHAEL  SERVETUS 


NOTE. 

While  the  present  little  work  was  in  press  we  received 
a  copy  of  Dr.  William  Osier's  brochure  on  Michael 
Servetus  (London,  Henry  Frowde,  1909,  pp.  ."J.")).  We 
learn  from  it  that  a  German  translation  of  the  Christian- 
ISMI  Restitutio  by  Dr.  Bernhard  Spiess  appeared  in  1895 
(2nd  edition,  Wiesbaden,  Chr.  Limbarth)  ;  and  that  the 
(Servetus  bibliography  is  fully  given,  up  to  1890,  in  Prof. 
A.  V.  D.  Linde's  Michael  Sekvetus    (Groningen,    1891). 

Dr.  Osier,  though  writing  in  a  liberal  and  sympathetic 
vein,  refrains  from  any  attempt  to  analyze  the  theology 
of  Servetus.  "  Judged  by  his  age,"  Dr.  Osier  observes, 
"  Servetus  was  a  rank  heretic,  and  as  deserving  of  death 
as  any  ever  tied  to  a  stake.  We  can  scarcely  call  him  a 
martyr  of  the   Church. — What   Church   would  own   him?" 

\\"I>at  Church,  indeed? 


3  1158  00608  1342 


AA    001  209  062    7 


H.H.EVANSI 
SAW  FBANCISCO 


